


Alien vs. Irken

by s4turn



Category: Alien (1979), Invader Zim
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood and Gore, Comedy, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mystery, Psychological Drama, Slow Burn, Space Opera, Survival Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 85,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s4turn/pseuds/s4turn
Summary: The Irken race discovers the planet they wish to use to harbor a massive extra-universal portal for military conquest has a dark, unknown past.Contains all original characters.





	1. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tallests Tau and Zeta receive an expected call with an unexpected outcome.

Jek's heels clicked as she crossed the bridge onto the The Massive, the largest and most intimidating ship of the Irken Armada. Her footsteps created a sharp, hollow, echoing sound despite the hundreds of other ship-bound Irkens reporting to duty all around her. The sheer size of its massive massiveness required it to be operated by thousands of Irkens: drones, palace guards, soldiers, navigators such as herself, and… mostly drones.

What made The Massive most special was that it was headed by the Almighty Tallest, the tallest and most powerful two individuals of the Irken race. It was an enormous red ship, Vort invented, Irken designed. Jek found herself honored to assist in navigating The Massive alongside the Almighty Tallest and nineteen other Irken Navigators, some of whom she had shared smeethood with.

Navigating the ship had been Jek's job for nearly fourteen Irken years – plenty of time for her to experience multiple planetary take-overs, Organic Sweeps, and a myriad of space battles against other alien races. As resilient and stubborn as these other races have been against Irken military technology, science and tactics, none have ever been capable of decimating the Irken Armada. Their numbers alone were often enough to destroy any population, but Jek was convinced that Irken intelligence, prowess, and cunning was the genuine reason for their endless success in galactic conquest.

"And then I was like… Look, our ships have a no refund policy, even if your Voot Cruiser's plasma boosters were accidentally replaced with two very subtly, strategically placed mini nukes. You'll have to take it up with corporate – "

Jek entered the command center of The Massive where she was greeted with the enormity of the holoscreen being operated by the Tallest, who were speaking with an off-world Invader about their unsurprising lack of success in global domination.

One of the Tallest, Tallest Zeta, stuffed probably about five soft pretzels into her mouth as her fellow Tallest, Tallest Tau, shared his council and wisdom to the troubled Invader.

"And the galactic navigator won't work!" the Invader said, with half a right antenna and deep green scratches freckling his face. "I keep getting this strange error. It's like, like a blue screen with a bunch of white letters on it."

Tallest Tau rested his gloved hand on his chin for several moments in deep, considerable contemplation before replying, "Have you tried turning it on and off again?"

The Invader on-screen gave a flabbergasted expression, shoulders slumping. He opened his mouth to speak again when a loud, resonating beeping sound echoed across the command center.

"Oh, sorry Invader Whatchamacallits, we're getting another call. We'll call you right back -- promise! Buh-bye now!"

The screen flickered the image of another Invader, and Tallest Tau promptly began advising them on a planetary conquest tactic that had been used by the Irkens for thousands of years called "starving the populace until they give up or die".

Jek seated herself, swiveling in her chair to face her personal command screen. The blue backlight reflected off of her round, ruby eyes, changing them to a ghostly shade of milky pink. Ironically, the color of Irken blood.

She adjusted her headset to the correct frequency to monitor any incoming traffic from the other Navigators of the Irken ships in the Armada, Invaders, and any natural radio waves from the surrounding planets, moons, and other orbital bodies, as well as any foreign ships entering or exiting the system. Most of the time the traffic was extremely boring, but sometimes on rare occasions something interesting would happen.

Every day of her life was the same: dress, report for duty, and repeat. And in between those steps, there was a lot of eating involved. There were not many other things that she thought about other than serving her empire and when her next meal would be. Jek's relationships with other Irkens, including coworkers, was minimal. Except with Dirk.

"Jek," a voice mumbled from beside her. "You're as aloof and as radiant as ever. Did you do something new with your antennae? They look especially curled today. Trying to impress me?"

"Dirk," Jek said. Her smirk was covered by the raised collar of her Navigator's uniform, which concealed their faces from the eyes down. "You remind me daily of how grateful I am that they integrated the smeeteries into our society long before either of our births, so that I may never have the unfortunate luck of being disgraced by the mere possibility of being paired with you."

Dirk chuckled softly, green eyes narrowing in amusement above a veiled grin, but he was otherwise silent.

Dirk was her best friend. He has sat beside her at his own command terminal for the past fourteen Irken years, and they were together ten years before that during their smeethood in the education plug. Jek could _almost_ not remember a time when Dirk was not around. Her first memory of him came right after her PAK was attached to her spine within a minute or two of her birth. From the PAK she received all Irken knowledge, a unique name, and a personality belonging to the Irken who owned the PAK before her. Most importantly, PAKs allowed all Irkens to record their memories. Dirk happened to be born and receive his PAK only a moment after Jek. They were both the first Irken the other had ever seen.

A persistent blinking from the corner of her eye cut her train of thought. Jek saw on the top right corner of her screen that The Massive was drifting aimlessly around a foreign moon with previously no name. Now it was simply known as Moon Number 69-420-69, orbiting a planet that had recently been dominated and decimated by an Invader. The planet was formerly named Click Click Cluck by the now deceased native species of moth-like inhabitants that had worshiped their nearest star, Click Cluck Click. Now it had plans to become yet another planet for snack manufacturing.

Jek yawned. She wished it was lunchtime.

The giant holoscreen began beeping again.

"Ugh, another call! What is it with today?" Tallest Tau groaned. "I've been talking all day! Zeta, you do it."

If Tallest Zeta had eyebrows, she would have raised one. "Wha-?" she said, swallowing the last pretzel in her snack bag. "No way, I'm not done eating yet. I've still got all this sugar at the bottom of the bag to eat. It's my favorite."

"No way! You're going to play me in Rock-Paper-Laser for it."

The holoscreen continued beeping.

"Rock, paper, laser – shoot!" they said in unison.

Zeta played laser. Tau played paper.

"Rock, paper, laser – shoot!"

Zeta played laser. Tau played rock.

"Rock, paper, laser – shoot!"

Zeta played laser. Tau played rock.

"I win!" Tallest Tau said gleefully, taking Zeta's snack bag and pouring the sugar down his throat. He relined in his chair as far as it would go, kicking up is feet.

"Not fair! Best three out of five."

"Nah, you're way too easy to beat." Tallest Tau shook his head. "Just answer the call."

"Uuuuuugh." Tallest Zeta groaned. "How does rock beat laser anyway? That doesn't make any sense. We destroy rocks with lasers all the time. Big rocks. Planets."

Tallest Tau gave an indifferent shrug and threw the pretzel bag onto the floor. A dutiful janitorial drone piddled over to begin sweeping up the mess.

Tallest Zeta rolled her eyes, and answered the call. "Yeah, what?"

"My Tallest," the Invader said on screen. "Invader Blue reporting. I have critical information regarding my assigned invasion and domination of the planet hence dubbed 'Portia'."

Tallest Zeta's blue eyes brightened with interest. She flashed a quick toothy smile, opening a bag of Irken Tater Crisps. "Oh, yes! How is progress on the extra-universal portal coming?"

"Excellently, my Tallest. Our military scientists estimate the portal should be fully operational in a mere week's time." Invader Blue's eyes veered off to the bottom right of the screen.

"What is it, Invader Blue? You seem… _reluctant_ to celebrate the good news."

Blue gave a short nod. "You're correct, my Tallest. The excavation team found disturbing evidence of ancient life on this planet."

Tallest Zeta bit into a crisp. "Isn't that why I sent you, Invader Blue? To destroy of all native lifeforms on the planet?"

"Yes, my Tallest. However, those ancient lifeforms have long since died --"

"Well then!" Tallest Zeta interrupted. "There's nothing to worry about!"

Invader Blue shuffled her feet uncomfortably. "But, my Tallest… the evidence we have collected suggests that the ancient life on this planet was Irken. Irken life thousands of years ago."

Tallest Zeta and Tallest Tau exchanged surprised glances with one another. The snacking ceased. The silence fell heavy.

Jek and Dirk also looked to each other, as well as the other Navigators.

"So..." Tallest Tau began, standing up and presenting himself at the screen, "what have you found that suggests our kind has been there before?"

"There is an entire city underground, decimated. Early Irken technologies such as Scoot Cruisers and transport ships were found."

"We haven't used Scoot Cruisers in over five thousand years," Tallest Zeta said, covering her mouth in disbelief.

Invader Blue continued. "Irken remains were also discovered. Many appeared to have been dismembered, but the cause of death in many more is currently unable to be determined."

"And why is that?" Tallest Tau asked.

"None of our scientists have seen anything like it before, my Tallest. The cause of death is a break in the ribcage."

"That's not too difficult to understand," Tallest Zeta countered. "They were destroyed by someone or something hitting them in the chest."

"I'm afraid not, my Tallest." Invader Blue shook her head. "No, the fatal wounds are far too uniform in nature, and shows evidence of the ribcage being broken from the inside. Something was exiting these Irkens as they died."

Another heavy silence.

"Invader Blue," said Tallest Zeta, "I want you investigate this matter further and keep us updated on the details."

"No," Tallest Tau interjected, pushing Tallest Zeta aside and stepping in front of her. "I will come to Portia personally to see what you have found for myself."

"Tau!" Tallest Zeta hissed softly. She suddenly seemed furious, and pushed herself forward to stand beside him once again. "It's not that big of a deal. They're all dead! Thousands of years of dead!"

Tallest Tau stepped back in front of her, his back to the screen. He pointed a finger at Tallest Zeta, poking her abruptly in the chest. "You obviously don't comprehend the significance of this. You couldn't."

Zeta stiffened her back, leaning forward to meet his eyes. His finger poked deeper into her chest. "Why? Is it because I am younger than you? Are you forgetting my genius idea was the extra-universal portal on that planet? None of this would have been discovered if not for my military expertise and engineering talents." She shoved his hand away. "We will continue operations as planned."

"What if your precious portal is compromised at the expense of your impatience? I am so sick of your chronic laziness and inability to -"

_Bwip._

The holoscreen went dark.

"Invader Blue?" Tallest Tau said, but got no answer.

Tallest Zeta stood with her arms crossed, frowning.

The silence returned. Jek repositioned herself in her seat, as she found herself sitting anxiously on the edge of it. As long as she had performed her duty as a Navigator for The Massive, she had never once witnessed an argument between the Tallest. The Tallest were who the lesser Irkens looked to for strength and wisdom. They were the only absolutes of their Empire, and now they were disagreeing.

Dirk gave her a soft look and a comforting nod. For a moment, Jek almost felt reassured by his gesture.

"Get Invader Blue back online, now!" Tallest Zeta shouted, eyes wide with frustration.

"My Tallest, I can't establish a connection," one Navigator said, but he spoke for them all. "It seems communications on their end are offline."

A heartbeat passed.

"I'm going to Portia," Tallest Tau said, already making his way across the bridge with long, heavy steps.

Tallest Zeta uncrossed her arms, throwing them out at her sides. "Tau, you can't. We are the Tallest! We rule together!"

"We rule to serve the Irken Empire. I am not serving my kind by sitting in here watching you eat snacks."

Tallest Tau reached the doorway to the exit and stopped. He turned around, but not to Tallest Zeta; to their navigator crew.

"I need Navigators to pilot a transport ship," he said. "Ten of you."

"Ten?" Tallest Zeta echoed, her voice raised far above his. "That's half of our crew! Only two are needed to operate a transport ship."

"Yeah, and the other eight will operate supporting cruisers along the way and back."

Tallest Zeta said nothing, but her expression spoke thousands of angry words.

"I need ten volunteers," Tallest Tau reiterated, looking to the Navigators expectantly. "No more, no less."

Three Navigators stood up instantly, two of which Jek recognized from the education plug. Two more followed suit, then two more. It was like she was watching her Empire being torn apart.

Something about it didn't seem right.

Another navigator stood.

And another, gripping onto her arm as he did so.

"Dirk?" she breathed, staring up at him with a mixture of fright and disbelief.

Jek didn't think this was right: the Tallest splitting up into two separate places after a heated argument. She learned in the education plug that the Tallest were always together in order to maintain the structure of the Empire, so that not one singular Irken could ever rule. This rule of two was meant to prevent civil wars, political parties, side groups, anarchists, rebels… the list went on. She felt damned if she chose to stay on The Massive, damned if she joined Tallest Tau on Portia.

As Dirk joined the others, Jek already felt her volunteering herself. She may not have agreed with the idea, but Tau was one of her Tallest, and she couldn't imagine being split up from Dirk. So, she followed them quietly.

  
***  


She, Dirk and the other eight navigators prepared a transport ship, equipped with eight support cruisers in the hull. The ship was nowhere close to The Massive, but it was five times as large as a Voot Runner. It was sleek, red on the inside and purple the outside. It was clean and up to date with the latest Irken technology, unusual for a transport ship. It also seemed brand new, unused.

There were two chairs situated at the front of the ship with a front window glaring out into space. Jek, Dirk and the eight other Navigators stood around in silence, taking it all in.

"Who's been here the longest?" Tallest Tau said as he approached them from behind. The Navigators turned meet him.

"Navigator Jek and I have, my Tallest," Dirk said with a slight bow. "We both became Navigators at the same time."

"How long?"

"Fourteen years, my Tallest."

"You all normally don't last that long, navigating military cruisers during Sweeps and such. You must be pretty good."

Dirk blushed slightly. "Well, I may have operated a military cruiser once --"

"You." Tallest Tau pointed to Jek. "You both have similar experience?"

Jek nodded quickly, overwhelmed. "Yes, my Tallest."

"Excellent! You'll operate the transport ship as the main pilot."

She had to contain herself, to keep her legs steady enough to stand. "My Tallest?"

"Yeah, I like the looks of you better than Navigator Dirk," he said, turning back to Dirk. "No offense, but your eyes are shaped all weird. You'll co-pilot. Everyone else will operate the support cruisers. Get to your ships. We leave in three minutes."

Any ounce of confidence Dirk had was shattered that moment. His shoulders slumped, and his blush turned into one of shame, not flattery.

The other Navigators nodded, all of them rushing toward the hull at once.

"Alright, let's get going!" Tallest Tau clapped his hands, and took position in the captain's chair in the middle of the flight deck.

Jek took her seat and booted up the pilot's control screen. "Computer, navigate us to sector 782, quadrant 4, to the planet Portia."

"Navigate us, she says," the computer grumbled. "You didn't say please."

"Okay. Please."

"Initiating...."

Jek's map on the control screen showed a trail of blue dots leading out of this planetary system, into the next. From her command station she transmitted the coordinates to the eight cruisers. Jek and Dirk adjusted their headsets to the communications frequency, and the Navigators began reporting in.

"Ready."

"Ready and waiting."

"Let's go already. I want to eat a donut."

All the Navigators reported in. Jek gave Dirk a nod, and he flipped the accelerator switch in front of him. He nodded back.

Jek closed her eyes, breathed in, and heaved a heavy sigh. _I have a bad feeling about this._

The transport ship grumbled as Jek slowly and carefully piloted out of the Irken docking station using a main control stick. On top of the stick was an analog stick that controlled the relative velocity of the ship. Jek pushed it slightly forward and the ship began to gain speed.

"Exiting the atmosphere in one minute."

"Life support systems stable, hyperdrive fully functional," Dirk said.

Jek pressed in the analog stick, and flipped a flashing blue switch to her right.

The transport ship jutted out of the atmosphere into space with amazing speed. They seemed to shoot past the stars millions of units away, but it was an illusion. In mere seconds, the planet Irk was a small speck behind them, glittering a faint purple hue against the vast, black void that was space.

"Ships One through Eight, separate from the mother and prepare to initialize hyperdrive to Portia," Jek spoke through her comm. She pressed "Release Hull" on the pilot screen's interface, which would give all the Navigators twenty seconds to exit the ship before the hull closed again.

Dirk pulled up the rear-view feed. Together they watched as all eight ships exited the hull and fall back three hundred units behind them.

"Hyperdrive active. All units converge. Initialize in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1..." Dirk shifted a lever and pushed it down into a socket, locking it into place. With a press of a button, the ship began to whir and buzz before disappearing further into the nothingness of their known universe toward the planet Portia, eight other ships following suit.


	2. Simulation

Tallest Zeta paced across the circular floor of the command center of the Massive. A dark holoscreen towered behind her. The room was quiet, except for the faint tapping noises of what was left of their Navigator crew performing their routine duties.

She heaved a sigh, and sat down in one of the captain seats. She glanced over at Tau's seat with frustration, exhaustion, and hatred. How could he leave her to support the Massive alone? Why couldn't he have sent an advisor and called it done? Tau had broken one unspoken Irken law to his duty as a Tallest: there was always two, always together.

Did he know something she didn't? Was he hiding something from her?

Could he have... _defected?_

"Care for some sugar pretzels, my Tallest? Or an Irken Licking Stick, perhaps?"

Zeta had not noticed the service drone at her side until she spoke. The Tallest shook her head. "No, I'm not interested."

The service drone persisted. "Are you sure, my Tallest? I would be happy to provide you with other options."

"No. That will be all."

The service drone bowed her head respectfully, and left.

Tallest Zeta's squeedlyspooch grumbled. The giant holoscreen beeped.

"A call, my Tallest," one of the Navigators said.

"Answer it."

An image of the dark shape of an Irken flickered onto the screen. The figure was seated with their legs crossed, back-lit by a dim lime-colored light, looking very comfortable.

Tallest Zeta stood. She smiled crookedly, crossing her arms. "Cypher. How nice of you to call."

"How nice of you to answer, Almighty Tallest Zeta." The voice crackled, high-pitched and deep all at once through the multiple frequencies that filtered it. "I thought you might like to know that the entire planet of Portia is offline, according to the absence of power signatures. The back-up generators have also failed."

"No wonder the communications between us and Invader Blue continue to fail."

"Precisely, my Tallest."

Tallest Zeta nodded slowly, thinking. "Any information on the reason for the worldwide power failure?"

"Not yet."

"Have you figured out why Tau insisted on visiting the planet alone? Any secrets he's been hiding from me?"

"I am quite sure there are many," Cypher replied, leaning in. "As requested of my Tallest, I am currently in the process of decrypting a number of files that were found stored on Tallest Tau's personal datapad. Luckily for me, his personal lock-code for most of the files was 'Donuts'. Unfortunately for me, they are protected by a second layer of security that make the files unreadable and unintelligible, at least, until the decryption process is complete. As for his intentions, those will be revealed in time."

"Contact me as soon as it's done," Zeta said.

"I live to serve you, my Tallest. Cypher Six, signing off."

*** 

Jek sat alone on the flight deck, gazing at the view of Portia from orbit. She had done some information gathering in their downtime in the planet's vicinity. It was a dark, desolate rock with no life and no water. Half of it was riddled with underground, ever-erupting volcanoes. The ash and flashes of hot, yellow sulfur gas from the geysers on the surface could be seen even outside the atmosphere. It was so thick that sunlight never grazed the surface of the inhabitable zone. The volcanoes made that half of the planet uninhabitable, but the other half was perfectly fine if you enjoyed dank, dark, lifeless nothingness.

The habitable zone was where the extra-universal portal was being built. It was so large that it took up nearly one quarter of the habitable zone's surface. The portal had been built into a massive ring situated on a tripodal shaft that extended outward from the planet into space.

Most interestingly, Portia was experiencing a planet-wide power failure, as they discovered upon arrival. With no ability to communicate with the Irkens on the planet, they would have to wait until daylight on the habitable zone of the planet to land.

Her Irken insides churned with anxiety. What Invader Blue reported before their systems went offline was disturbing: past Irkens died thousands of years ago under mysterious, unknown circumstances. The civilization seemed to have been completely forgotten, proven by the Tallests' reactions to the news. How could their people forget an entire colony of Irkens? Why would they choose to settle on Portia in the first place, when half of the planet was entirely incapable of sustaining life? Why was a portal being built there now?

Could they have forgotten on purpose? Was the information deliberately erased from all Irken knowledge? If it was, Jek thought, then why?

Dirk appeared at Jek's side suddenly. Her squeedlyspooch felt like it had done a somersault over her heart. She clutched her hands to her chest in surprise. "Oh, Dirk! Where have you been?"

"Where have _you_ been?" he asked. "Everyone's eating in the dining hall right now."

"I wanted to be alone," she confessed, her eyes returning to the shadowy-blue planet below. "This planet… something feels bad about it."

Dirk placed a hand on the corner of her chair, swiveling her back to face him. "It isn't home, that's for sure. It has been a long time since we weren't on the Massive."

"You're right, but..." she trailed off, trying to find the words for what she was feeling. "I can't shake the thought that we shouldn't be here."

"We are serving our Tallest. We must be here," he said, bending down to her height in the chair. He placed a thin finger behind Jek's uniform collar and gently pulled it down around her neck, exposing her face. "I know what will cheer you up."

Jek squeaked out a small chuckle, trying to conceal her pointy-toothed smile. "Food?"

"Food."

They walked together to the dining hall where Tallest Tau was entertaining his subordinates at a small red table with a story about when Tallest Zeta choked on a Space Donut filled with creamy dark matter filling during their vacation year across the galaxy.

"She started to turn more green than usual," he said over all of the Irkens laughing around him. "I thought she was joking until she passed out, right there in the gift shop."

Jek sat down quietly beside an Irken soldier. She was immediately attended to by a tiny service drone who hurriedly brought her a tray of food and a drink. Jek nodded to him graciously, more than happy to accept a meal. She instantly tore into her Space Burrito, realizing just how hungry she was. Then she took another bite, a huge one this time.

Dirk sat on the other side of Jek. He received the same treatment and paid the service drone no heed.

"I had to resuscitate her," Tallest Tau continued, setting what seemed to be his fourth plate of food aside, and signaled for fifths. "It was the first time I had my tongue down anyone's throat, and I learned that's not the way you're supposed to do it."

The service drone handed him another tray. Tau took a drink. "But," he said, putting his hand up in defense, "my tongue triggered her gag reflex and the donut flew out of her throat onto my shoulder! Best donut I ever ate."

The Irken crew erupted into hysterics, some of them holding onto others for support in their laughter, and most of them with tears in their eyes. Jek also found herself giggling. With food in her belly and a good story, she was starting to have a good time, even in such strange, unique company.

There was the soldier group that included the male soldier beside her and two others: an Irken female, suited completely up to the neck in thick, purple gear, and the smallest of the three, a pudgy and short for a soldier with tiny red eyes and dark green freckles. The male beside her was the epitome of an Irken soldier, like the female soldier: large, thick and muscular. He was attractive by Irken standards, which made Jek think he must be the highest ranking in his three-man squadron.

Farther down the table toward Tallest Tau were four engineers, two males and two females. Closer to Tau were two science officers, both male, in their white lab coats with their goggles situated above their eyes around their foreheads.

Closest to Tau was four of his palace guards, three females and one male. Their faces were still covered by their uniform collars, quite similar to the ones the Navigators wore, but more relaxed and loose. None of them were eating, or gave any indication that they had.

Then, Tallest Tau himself. Not only was he one of the Tallest, but Jek had always kind of fancied him. As a smeet she never would have imagined that she would be working for Tau in the future, much less sharing a meal with him in orbit of a distant, disaster-ridden death planet.

Tallest Tau burped and slumped in his seat, looking full and very satisfied. It took him several seconds to yawn, scratch his stomach and leisurely glance around the room.

"Oh, look everybody, our pilot's here!" he said, gesturing toward Jek and Dirk at the end of the table. "And the other, more weird-looking one!"

Dirk put his utensils down abruptly, frowning. Jek coughed, trying to force down the food she had been chewing.

"Pilot, how are those diagnostics I asked you to run?" Tau asked. "Any contact from Portia?"

Jek felt her face becoming hot after being asked such a sudden question. "I was unable to reach Portia's landing station. As we thought, the entire planet has gone offline. I'm not receiving any power signatures from anywhere on Portia, not even from the back-up generators," she said.

"Woooow. That sucks."

"It does suck, but I'm confident that when the sun rises in six hours time, the landing station will be visible enough for us to land. Then, we can find someone to talk to."

"We could restore the power on Portia," a male engineer suggested. "Well, if their engineers don't beat us to it."

"That would be decent," Tau said, scratching his chin. "I see my judgment in handling this matter myself was a good one. Zeta would have had to wait a lot longer for her extra-universal portal if it weren't for my flawless intuition."

Murmurs of agreement were heard all across the table.

Jek shifted uncomfortably, unanswered questions still weighing on her mind, but she would not dare ask them to anyone, especially her Tallest.

"If we have to wait until sunrise, we might as well have some fun doing it!" Tau said decisively, clapping his hands. He stood and stretched, his spine cracking in every place it possibly could. "Somebody, get me my pummeling mallets!"


	3. Secrets

Invader Blue felt… _sticky._

The Irken Invader opened her blue eyes to darkness. With her ocular implants, she was able to make out shapes around her with what little light there was. But it didn't take sight to tell her that she couldn't move her head, her arms, or her legs.

Invader Blue glanced around for a way to free herself, and found only a translucent, sticky resin surrounding her. It stretched from the floor to the walls, to the walls up to the ceiling. She was cocooned in it from the neck down, completely immobilized and alone.

She activated the laser cutters of her PAK. Four spider-like legs flayed out at her sides like wings, breaking though the resin that trapped her, scorching it. Invader Blue directed the four beams to swivel around her, slicing and melting the goop that held her in place. Small plumes of smoke wafted from the incisions, burning her eyes with the sickly stench of searing organic matter.

Within seconds, Invader Blue was freed. She fell to the viscous floor, her knees and hands engulfed with it as she sunk into the shallow goop, coughing. With the realization that she was pinned down in an unfamiliar place, a sense of dread rippled through her. She felt as if her heart was burning. Every breath became painful, but escape was her only concern. She used the legs of her PAK to move through the resin, grabbing onto the least-covered surfaces of the cave, tunnel, cavern… wherever she was.

Invader Blue could barely see a faint light to her left, and urged herself in that direction. As her legs lurched her forward through the misty, dank environment, she thought she saw something move out of the corner of her eye: something black, sleek, and smooth.

She stopped and held her breath, glancing in the direction of the movement. A couple seconds passed.

Nothing.

Invader Blue continued on, her pace quickening; her heart beat faster, and her breath became rapid. She felt some strong discomfort, but most of all, she felt fear. It was a creeping, looming sensation that was ill-founded as far as logic was concerned, but still very real. Something in her instincts told her to be afraid. Very afraid.

_It's almost like I'm being... watched._

As she was moving, one of her spidery legs caught something. As the rest of her tried to move forward, the stuck leg snapped the rest of her body back like a rubber band. Invader Blue gasped, having the wind knocked out of her. Desperate, she tugged at the leg in an attempt to free it.

She got tired of that quickly and chose to detach the leg from her PAK and keep moving, but found herself unable to. Her insides felt like they were on fire. Her heart ached, throbbing slowly. It made her feel dizzy. The Invader wrapped her arms around herself, suspended limply by her mechanical limbs. Invader Blue tried to keep the agony from spreading by pressing her arms tighter and tighter around her chest, but the tighter she held herself together the stronger the feeling inside her became.

Invader Blue breathed heavily, gasping for what little air she could bring into her lungs without her heart exploding. And then, it did.

Invader Blue's heart exploded.

Milky pink blood sprayed from her mouth like a fountainhead in a parabolic arch. It splattered in a straight line before her, collecting heaviest in a pool beneath her feet. Her PAK beeped and glowed red, and her Lifeclock began counting down her moments to live. The realization that she had reached the end of her life set in. Invader Blue squirmed, the pressure inside her chest building with such intensity that with her last breath before her rib cage blew apart, she screamed.

***

"They're landing now?"

"Yes, my Tallest." The Cypher's black, dim-lit image blazed on the giant holoscreen, their voice filling the command center. "Tallest Tau issued the order just two minutes prior to my call."

"And he still hasn't even tried calling me himself! The nerve of his stupid, stupid deformed head, and his hideous, large, sparking red eyes, and ugly, big, fat… everything!" Tallest Zeta furiously sucked the straw of an Irken Bubble Sucky, stopping only to burp and speak again. "So, what about his datapad?"

"I decrypted the files and uploaded them onto a remote storage server accessible to you for your convenience. Instead of me telling you what is on them, I much rather my Tallest reach her own conclusions," Cypher Six said.

Zeta grinned. "That's why I like you, Cypher. You always know what I want before I do."

The Cypher's antennae twitched respectfully. "It is my duty to serve you, Almighty Tallest Zeta. Cypher Six, signing off."

Their image flickered and was gone, the holoscreen returning to its idle state once again.

"I want those files!" Tallest Zeta hissed, hovering over to the Navigator closest to her. "You, make it happen in thirty seconds or I'll flood your PAK with so much corrupted data that your head will explode into so many little, squishy brain bits that a janitorial drone will spend the next five years scooping you up."

The Navigator nodded quickly, his fingers scrambling over the keys on his keyboard. He had the data uploaded to a datapad in twenty-three seconds. He handed it to her, his wrists shaking with the relief that he wasn't going to die today.

Tallest Zeta took the datapad. She scrolled upward. The further she did so, the more her eyes widened. "This is… so _interesting,_ " she said, her voice breaking into a low, deep, sickening laugh.

***

Jek reattached her PAK back to her spine. It gave a dull click, meshing perfectly with her anatomy. She stretched a little to check its orientation. Satisfied and recharged, she started off toward the flight deck for landing.

Dirk was already seated when she arrived. Tallest Tau was relaxing in the captain's chair, using a service drone as a footstool. The drone quivered under his weight.

"One minute, people!" Tau shouted, watching the engineers scramble to their stations below the flight deck. He munched on some Irken Popcorn, looking excited.

Jek adjusted her headset and gazed down at the faintly-illuminated surface of Portia's habitable zone. The landing pad was situated a hundred and thirty units away from the portal; they would have no trouble landing safely around it. The landing pad itself was large, but was incomparable to the size of the portal. It was circular, a sleek lavender color with orbicular lights situated around its base that could function at night if the planet had any power.

Jek brought the transport ship around with the control stick. She pressed lightly on the analog stick that controlled the velocity of the ship, bringing them closer to the planet. The gravity due to their vicinity to the planet shifted, and Dirk lowered the levels on their ship to keep it from crushing them.

"We're going in," Jek said into her headset. The message was received by the other Navigators listening in, controlling the support ships.

She moved the ship faster toward Portia, bracing herself as she signaled Dirk to flip the accelerator switch. They broke into the atmosphere at high speed, the ship rattling and shaking against the intensity of the pressure. The atmosphere was thin, but it was dense.

"Expect more turbulence as we break through," she said, leaning up to flick some stabilizer switches above her. The buttons pulsed red, and then green, signaling that they were active. "Dirk, adjust the gravity."

"I'm already on it."

A sudden wave of weightlessness pulsed through the ship. There was a silent gasp about the ship as everyone's heart bounced into their throats, crashing back down on their squeedlyspooches.

"Wooohooo!" Tallest Tau screamed in delight, most of what was left of his popcorn spilling into the floor. "No hands!"

Jek chuckled, her Tallest's reaction bringing her confidence. They broke smoothly through the atmosphere and hit their first round of thin, hot clouds. Once the skies were clear, Jek nosedived toward the surface of the planet. She twisted the control stick to the side, sending the ship into a downward spiral.

Dirk turned to her, wide-eyed.

Tau continued to happily scream.

Jek felt free.

The vicinity alarm began to wail across the ship; when an object was becoming dangerously close to the ship, the vicinity alarm lets you know. And that object was Portia's rocky surface.

"Uh, Jek," Dirk muttered sitting on the edge of his seat, his grip tight on the arms of his chair. "Maybe you should bring the ship up."

"Just watch."

The ground was coming up on them fast. The alarms got louder, and Tau was still screaming. He was either really enjoying himself, or he was about to lose every ounce of his sanity.

"Bring the ship up, Jek!"

She did just that at the last moment. Jek pulled as hard on the control stick as she could, leveling the ship out just three units from the ground. She laughed a high-pitched, joyous laugh, and brought the ship up once again, taking it to a dive drop before leveling it out just above the landing pad.

Dirk switched off the accelerator switch and began powering down the ship. As the ship lost its energy, it settled on the landing pad with a gentle, quiet thud.

"How was that, my Tallest?" Jek asked, craning her neck over the back of her seat.

Tallest Tau kicked the service drone to the side and stood up. He started brushing bits of popcorn off of himself. "You are either a really good pilot or really bad pilot, depending on your intentions," he said. "But yeah, that was entertaining!"

Jek slid down in her seat, smiling so hard her face hurt. She pressed her hands to her cheeks and looked over to Dirk, her ruby eyes big and watery with happiness.

He didn't look nearly as happy as her. At all.

"Don't _ever_ do that again," he snapped. He stood angrily from his seat, watching Tallest Tau gingerly as he began to unboard with the rest of the crew.

Jek got to her feet. Her expression had done a 180 turn. She wiped the happy tears away from her eyes with her wrist and readjusted her collar in an attempt to conceal the effects Dirk's words on her mood. She glared in his direction over the rim of her collar, her expression thin underneath. 

"What, you're wondering what you did wrong?" he remarked, unimpressed by her show of disapproval.

"I am," she admitted, tugging her collar down around her neck to free her face again. "The Tallest was enjoying it, so I did a couple tricks so he would enjoy it even more."

"You were showing off unnecessarily. It was a dangerous thing to do. We, or worse, the _Tallest_ , could have been injured."

"But I knew what I was doing," Jek insisted. "We've done things like that together. You know I can fly."

Dirk crossed his arms. "It's not about whether or not you can fly. I know you can fly, but the Tallest does not. It looks poorly on you, and on us."

Jek understood what he was saying. She agreed that his logic was sound, but she didn't feel the same way. "Well, if I was Tallest, I -"

"I'm going to stop you there," Dirk said, pressing a finger to her lips. "You are not the Tallest. You are a Navigator. You are not a drone, so it isn't your place to entertain. A Navigator is all you are, all you trained to be, all you ever will be. I would take your role more seriously when we get off this rock."

Dirk left her alone on the flight deck. For a moment Jek stood there and absorbed the silence.


	4. Out of Shadows

All was quiet on Portia except for the faint buzzing and clanging sounds of the automated, skeletal robots tending to their programmed duties as they whirred around the portal far into the sky, past thin, hot clouds and plumes of drifting sulfur gas. The robots were capable of making minor adjustments and repairs to the portal, but Irken worker drones were needed to remotely control them for more intricate tasks in construction. Jek was surprised that they still had power; they probably had a solar back-up battery, but it was likely they would be running low soon. The sunlight on the habitable zone of Portia was dim at best.

"Alright, so there should be an Irken base a couple megaunits away from here nestled in some rock formations," Tallest Tau said, scrolling through the diagnostics he asked Jek to run while they were in orbit on his datapad. "Ten megaunits out from that, underground, is where the power station will be. There are homing beacons on both, so it'll be easy to find."

The surrounding Irkens listened silently, nodding.

"Now, the worker drones, scientists and engineers traveled here on a transport ship quite similar to ours, but smaller and not as cool or new. It would be nice to find it, especially if we don't find any survivors. If we don't find anyone, we have to assume they left Portia, probably back to Irk for help after the power and communications went offline. That, or they're dead. Any questions so far?"

"My Tallest, how can the beacons be sending out signals, but they can't contact us?" a stout, young Navigator asked.

"It's called Backscatter, and you should have learned that in the education plug." Tau sighed, looking slightly offended. "Okay, any more, not stupid questions?"

The Irkens glanced at each other, saying nothing.

"Okay, great! Here's what we're gonna do: we're going to take one team to the base, and another team to the power station. The base team will consist of the three soldiers. One Navigator, uhhh," Tau looked across the crowd and chose a random Navigator, "you, will fly them over there in your ship. Two other Navigators with support ships will follow you to the base, just in case we find anyone. Anyone we find, I want them brought back to our ship."

The base team nodded. A big soldier began checking his sidearm for ammo.

"The power station team will include the science officers and engineers," Tau continued. "Three Navigators will transport and escort them also. Your objective is repair the power station, get it operational. Both teams are to report in on your progress on the same channel we used to communicate on the way here."

The power station team assembled themselves quickly, and began boarding their ships. The base team did the same after some discussion on which Navigators were going to join them. One of which was the young Navigator that asked the stupid question.

Tallest Tau gestured to Jek and Dirk. "Pilots, you will be in charge of communicating with the two teams." He pointed to Dirk. "You will communicate with the base team. And you," he said to Jek, "will communicate with the power station team."

"Yes, my Tallest," they said in unison.

Tallest Tau faced the remaining two Navigators. "Do a bit of maintenance on the ship. Make sure everything is running as it should be, that our power cell is still charged, all that stuff. Then, make sure we have food for later. Can either of you make donuts?"

"Pleek can, my Tallest!"

The Navigator known as Pleek bowed. "I used to be a fast food drone until the Control Brains reconsidered my talents."

"Excellent!"

Tau and the four Navigators entered the ship, leaving behind the palace guards to monitor the ship from the outside. Tau went to his captain's chair and reclined, calling up a service drone to bring him something to drink.

Jek sat in the pilot's seat and began monitoring the communications between the members of the power station team. So far there was only absent-minded chatter. Dirk sat beside her without a glance, and she presumed he was doing the same for the base team.

She brought up the signatures of the three support ships on her computer, running a quick script manually in a command terminal. A digitalized map of the planet unfolded in another window. From there, Jek was able to monitor the ships' progress. From the looks of it, the team was almost to the site of the power station – just six megaunits away. With another quick script, she was able to run a bioscan on the ships as well as a radius of one megaunit around them. The scan matched near-perfectly with the large blue dots of the ships with the tiny green ones of the Irkens inside of them.

"Base team has arrived to their destination," Dirk announced. Tallest Tau nodded somewhat absently as he was playing a video game on his datapad.

But Jek was listening. She turned her attention for a moment to Dirk's computer screen, which showed the ships' locations based on latitude and longitude on an interface rather than a map like Jek had done. They had different ways of thinking and doing things, despite being given an equivalent education.

Jek tuned one side of her headphones to the base team channel out of curiosity. If the power station team's ships remained their current velocity, they would reach the power station in the next several minutes, so she had time.

"No power, but there is evidence of very recent activity," a Navigator reported. "There are pieces of food and wrappers on the tables. The soldiers are securing the first room now."

"Wait," another voice popped in, the same one that belonged to the Navigator that asked a stupid question earlier. "Something's wrong with my datapad. It's all… smaller than usual…."

Jek and Dirk may have had tension between them, but they both shared a wave of second-hand embarrassment.

"Go into settings and select resolution," Dirk said.

"Reso-what?"

"Kip, are you serious?" the first Navigator asked. "Here – like this."

There was some silence for a moment, just the faint sounds of grunts and breathing.

"Oh, I see what you're saying now. The screen's locked. What's your passcode?"

"You're not supposed to ask me that," Kip said. "And… I don't remember."

Dirk rolled his eyes, sitting up stiffly in his chair. "Tallest Almighty," he groaned. "Navigators, figure this out now."

"Nibbler is in the ship, waiting on us. I'll go get him real quick -" Kip suggested.

"No," Dirk said. "I'll remotely access your datapad, Kip. What's the datapad's ID number?"

Kip stammered, "I… I don't know."

Dirk looked like he was about to lose it. Jek slammed her face onto the keyboard.

"Wait a second," a deep, unfamiliar voice said. "Hand me the datapad."

There was another moment of grunting and breathing from the team, and a couple of indecipherable whispers. And then, a dull crashing sound.

"Omega, go check that out," the deep voice said. "And take a probe light."

***

Omega nodded to his commander, saluting him briefly with his antennae even though he wouldn't see it. He was far too busy trying to fix the Navigator's datapad. Omega turned and lightly tugged on the sleeve of the other, female soldier.

She grimaced. "What, Omega?"

"Will you go with me, Violet?" he asked, his tiny red eyes bulging as big as they could get.

"What, you scared or something?" Violet scoffed, pushing him away. "You were given a direct order from your commander. Get going, _slug_."

Omega recoiled away, disappointed but proud of his bravery to ask Violet a direct question. It was worth a try. He trudged away in the direction of the sound.

Omega was the smallest of the three soldiers. He was short and pudgy rather than big and hardy, like Violet and their commander, Alpha, for whom he had a great hatred. Alpha was always pushing him around, treating him like an expendable slave rather than a fellow soldier. When they worked as a unit, Omega would always bring up the rear and do the grunt work. When they worked separately, he always got the worst, most dangerous tasks.

But he obeyed. And after Violet questioning his bravery, Omega wouldn't be able to live it down if he didn't. In fact, if the sound ended up originating from frightened, helpless Irkens from within the base and he brought them back safely, he would look like a hero! That would really impress Violet, and Alpha appreciate him more!

Omega tried to impress Violet on several occasions: with shows of strength, prowess, cunning, and gifts.

Just days before, Omega had acquired two dozen donuts while on board the Massive. The Tallest were in the middle of gorging themselves with them, and there were so many they were practically swimming in the multiple mounds of donuts. What was twenty-four of them gone missing?

After all, donuts were Violet's favorite food.

He smuggled them happily to her personal quarters, a housing privilege all Elite Irken soldiers enjoyed. He found her pod near the center of the long, circular dorm hall. Number sixty-three, matching the numbered insignia Violet herself had burned into the left shoulder guard of her armor. Omega pressed the call button on the outside of the door. When he got no answer, he impatiently pushed the button on the door itself, and it lifted effortlessly with a quiet _hiss_.

He hurriedly walked into the room. He looked around, seeing a neat and tidy living space with a couch, chairs, a table, personal computer and a weapons cabinet. Violet was nowhere to be found, although her armor was set aside in one of the chairs. If Omega had looked more closely, he would have noticed that the armor in the chair was a bit too big and wide for Violet, and a plasma rifle situated against the chair did not look like hers at all.

Voices echoed outside in the hall. That's when Omega realized he forgot to shut the door. He slammed the override button, locking it and shutting it before anyone could notice. If someone noticed him in Violet's room before she got here, it would ruin his surprise.

But the voices turned to laughter, and they were right outside the door. Frantic, Omega jumped into Violet's weapons cabinet. It was full of weapons: plasma rifles, sidearm plasma pistols, grenades, and some other things he couldn't identify in the dark. He and the donuts hardly fit in there at all, but he managed. There was another faint hiss at the door, and it opened.

_Hiss._

The sound brought Omega back to reality. He raised his rifle, pointing aimlessly in the direction of the noise. He realized he had no idea where he was, and that he had been walking around the base lost in thought rather than investigating.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of a shadow, and he turned around to face it. But it was already gone.

_Hiss._

It was the last thing he heard before his world went black.


	5. Acid Rain

Omega woke suddenly, his eyes snapping open to a view of the base's ceiling. It was still dark around him, all except for his probe light laying on the ground next to him. He took it in his hand and used it to look around the room. There was nothing unusual; he was exactly where he last remembered being: lost.

Slowly, the small Irken soldier stood up. He wondered how long he laid there, and why he blacked out at all. His Lifeclock wasn't initiated, so he was certain he wasn't mortally wounded. That was a good sign.

Omega started back the way he presumably came. The farther he went, the more voices he could hear. He broke into a slow run, relieved that he hadn't been left alone. On his way he stepped on something that crunched sickly beneath his boot, but paid it no mind.

***

Jek finally got the conformation that the power station team made it underground and were working on the power generator. Her computer screen showed six green dots at the power station less than a quarter of a unit underground, accounting for the three scientists, two engineers and one Navigator. Anything that was living and not Irken would show up in red, which there was none of. The other two Navigators seemed to be on one of the three ships at the site. Their green dots overlapped, but they were still distinguishable. Jek giggled to herself, imagining what they could be doing in there.

"We've found them! We've found them!" came a Navigator's voice over the base team channel. Jek still had one side of her headset tuned in on that team in congruence with her own. She looked to Dirk excitedly, who returned her expression with equal emotion.

"Good job, base team. How many did you find?" Dirk asked.

"Nine," the Navigator said. "Six worker drones, a scientist and two engineers."

Dirk swiveled his chair to face Tau, who was deeper into his video game now. "My Tallest, they have found nine Irkens in the base."

Tallest Tau seemed pleased, but didn't take his eyes off of his datapad. "Cool. Bring them back here, so we can get more information about what happened and where all the others are."

Dirk nodded and communicated Tau's request to the other Navigator. They made plans to leave the base and come to the transport ship in a few minutes, after the nine Irkens gathered miscellaneous items of importance from the base.

Jek turned her microphone off, but continued to listen to the clanking and dull chatter from the power station team. "I wonder how many others were on this planet?"

"Many more. I can imagine it takes more than six worker drones to build something like that," Dirk mused, glancing at the massive, imposing portal outside. That's when he noticed dense, yellow clouds collecting over the horizon.

He ran a quick weather diagnostic. The atmosphere around them was thickening into a collection of sulfuric gas and other atmospheric elements, creating dense clouds of sulfuric acid. Dirk hummed a low whistle, and immediately got back online.

"Base team, do you read?"

"Yes," Kip responded, this time.

"You need to leave now," he said urgently, reading off from his computer screen. Jek also leaned in to have a look. "You have less than six minutes to reach the transport ship. There's an acid storm coming. You can fly through it for a minute or two, but your shields won't last much longer than that when the ship is being operated."

"Oh gosh, okay, okay, we'll leave immediately," Kip said, shouting to the others what Dirk had just told him. There were a couple of crashing and rustling sounds in the background. "Should the ships be parked in the hull, then?"

Dirk shook his head. "They will survive the acid storm intact so long as the ship's power isn't being used in any other way. Get here, and worry about that later."

"My Tallest, an acid storm is approaching us," Jek said loud enough for Tau to hear. "Shall I call in the palace guards?"

"Uh, yeah," he said, fervently clicking on his datapad. "Maybe they can help me beat this level. One of them is particularly good at it. I can't defeat this... freaking… _boss_!"

Jek got up from her seat and opened the ship's main door, explaining the situation quickly to the palace guards. They boarded the ship, and Tau called over one of the females, called Nexus, to come and help him with his video game.

Jek reseated herself, glancing over at her computer screen. The green dots were relatively unchanged. She swiveled over to Dirk's station, anxious that the base team wouldn't arrive in time. There was a countdown in the corner of Dirk's screen; the team had four minutes left.

"Entering the ships now. It's going to be a little snug in here," the unnamed Navigator said, grunting. "Hey! Wait – who touched my butt just now?"

Jek was so absorbed in listening in on the base team that she didn't notice the quickly increasing red dots appearing on the screen beside her.

The interface on Dirk's screen showed that the ships were now moving at high velocity. At their current speed they would reach the transport ship in three minutes. The acid storm started in two minutes and forty-five seconds, assuming the math was right.

On Jek's screen, the red dots continued to multiply.

"Almost got it..." a female voice mumbled. "Once we solder this wire, the power should be back online."

Jek snapped back to the reality of her duty, feeling slightly bad that she had been somewhat neglecting the power station team. There wasn't much she could say about the science or engineering aspects when it came to electricity or power generation, but –

_Tallest Almighty!_

That's when she saw them: the dozens of red dots inching closer and closer towards the six green dots at the power station. Jek's fingers fumbled over her headset, turning her microphone back on. She breathed in heavily, unsure for a moment what to say.

"Power station team, it is imperative that you get out of there as soon as possible -" she said, but her words were drowned out by hoots and hollers of celebration from the entire team and a deep whirring sound.

"The power is back on!" Jek heard one of the Irkens say. "We did it, we did it!"

"Power station team, can you hear me?" Jek repeated. "It is imperative that you get out of there! Deeper into the underground, something!" She could feel herself start to sweat. Her heart beat deep into her tightening throat with anxiety and guilt; if only she had paid more attention to the monitor! She could have saved them from… whatever it was!

Panicking, she looked back to the computer screen. And then that's when she noticed the red dots were gone, green dots included. In a single instant, theyhad disappeared.

Confused, she restarted her script and ran it again. All green dots. No red ones to be found. She restarted it again for safe measure, receiving the same results.

Could it have glitched? she wondered, though not convinced with the possibility. Is the storm interfering with the biosignatures somehow due to the presence of atmospheric organic molecules?

"I'm sorry, Navigator," the female voice from before said. "We were so excited to get the power back online we didn't hear what you said. Anyway, all that is left to do is to reset the fuses and repair the backup generator. That will be the easy part. So, what were you saying?"

Jek nodded slowly, her eyes locked on the computer screen. Eight green dots. "Oh, just that we noticed the power was back on and I wanted to congratulate you." Jek bit her lip. "Also, there is a sulfuric acid storm over your position. Remain underground and you won't be affected."

"We have no plans to resurface anytime soon. Let us know when the storm clears so when we are done, we can make plans to return to the ship."

"Of course. I will be listening on standby."

Jek turned off her microphone once again and by the sounds of it, so did the Irken she was talking to. She sat listlessly in her chair, numb to the world around her. The haunting feeling of unease she felt when they arrived to Portia's orbit returned, casting itself over her like a thick, inescapable shadow.

Something was definitely not right.

"Open the door – quickly!"

Dirk's voice returned her to the moment, followed by the heavy pelleting of acid rain on the exterior of the transport ship. Jek sat up and turned around to see him making a break for the door. He punched the open button and jumped out of the way just in time as several Irkens flooded into the ship. Some of them had small holes in their clothes and armor from the acid burning through them, but were otherwise unharmed. The invisible bubble of protection around heir heads provided by their PAKs seemed to have kept them safe for the few seconds of their exposure to the rain.

Tallest Tau stood to greet them. He pushed past Nexus, who was still in the middle of the boss battle on his datapad. "Alright, so I'll get straight to it," he said to the nine rescued Irkens. "Just what has been happening on this planet?"


	6. Alien

They all sat along the long red table in the dining hall. Pyramids of donuts were placed at every two-to-three Irkens; as easily accessible as they were, the more easily they were devoured. Pleek looked very pleased with himself that everyone, especially a Tallest, was enjoying his donuts.

Even with the addition of nine more Irkens to the transport ship, the crowd didn't seem to change. The table was still relatively empty, as the other eight Irkens at the power station were still working on restoring the back-up generator. But the tension made the air thicker, creating the illusion of the presence of more bodies than there were.

The nine Irkens excessively gorged themselves with donuts for several minutes, as if they hadn't eaten any fresh food in a very long time.

"So now that you have food in your bellies, explain to me what events occurred on this planet from the time you were appointed your duties to the time you were found by my soldiers," Tau said, leaning forward in his seat. "Don't leave out a single detail."

The nine Irkens all looked to each other as if to decide who their spokesperson would be. Most eyes lay on the single scientist that was found with them, expectant for her to say something.

The scientist swallowed the last piece of a donut she was eating, getting the hint. She breathed in deeply as if to settle her thoughts before speaking. There was a look of seriousness on her face. Her expression was stern – tense. Almost… haunted.

"I will begin by saying this: my name is Libby. I was sent here by Tallest Zeta as part of a team with twenty other scientists, but they're all gone now."

"Gone?" Tau asked. "Where?"

"I don't know. We worked for a total of six hundred and forty-seven days here before the power failed. During that time, a lot of things happened," she said quietly. "There are many things we can't explain."

The audience looked to each other curiously, and to Tau. Jek shared a nervous glance with Dirk, who seemed more interested than afraid.

Libby continued, her green eyes veering down to her empty plate. "Irkens began going missing. The first person we lost was Snooze, who was a very lazy fellow scientist particularly good in computing. We were working in the base on a program that would allow anyone with the proper clearance to operate the extra-dimensional portal remotely, but with tight security so not just anyone could do it. He went outside to manually input the program into the portal's systems, but he never came back. He was just… gone. We never saw him again.

"After Snooze was gone, one Irken every month or so would go missing. Then two. Then three. It didn't take long before we started performing our duties in larger and larger groups, just to stay safe. But there were some duties we couldn't avoid, such as maintaining the power station. It is unarguably the most dangerous place for us to go."

"And why is that?" Tau asked, intrigued.

"Because no matter how many we sent down there, they would all go missing," Libby said, her expression darkening. "That's when we started to not go down there at all. That's the reason the power failed. We became too afraid to do routine maintenance on it. We stopped working on the portal. Before too long, it was just us nine at the base, out of the original one hundred and fifty of us." She breathed in deeply, her eyes showing the beginnings of tears. "My Tallest, we tried contacting the Massive many times. Why did you not answer us?"

Tallest Tau looked genuinely puzzled. "The only calls I remember receiving from Portia were updates from Invader Blue. The last I heard from her, she said the construction of the portal was going well and it would be finished within a week."

Libby's eyes widened releasing a gentle stream of tears down her cheeks. "What?" she gasped, blinking back more tears. She looked to the eight other Irkens, who were all equally as devastated. "Invader Blue? My Tallest, we know no one by that name."

Jek felt herself shaking. Her hands gripped around her knees; she remembered all the red dots she saw for an instant on her computer screen. If what Libby said had sustenance, the power station team was as good as dead.

Jek shot up from her seat, sending her chair scooting across the floor behind her. Her shoulders trembled, and her spine shivered. Her throat felt hot and dry. "Libby, I need to ask you something very important."

"Okay," Libby said, wiping a tear from her chin.

Jek looked across the table to her. "With your knowledge and experience as a scientist and your familiarity with the power station, would you think that it is possible for a power surge to interrupt any bio-communications being monitored remotely from there to this ship?"

Libby nodded slowly. "I suppose that's possible, depending on the level of physical and electrical interference."

"Physical interference? Like what?"

"Rocks, mountains, caverns, the depth at which the signatures are being read." Libby glared questioningly at Jek. "Why are you asking me this?"

Jek felt a sudden pressure on her, as all eyes peered in her direction. "Because I saw something weird on my monitor. Red dots – biosignatures that weren't Irken. There were dozens of them all at once, and then -"

Her voice was overpowered by the sound of one of the soldiers coughing. He leaned over the table almost painfully, holding his stomach. The biggest soldier patted him on the back and laughed.

"What's the matter? The food's not that bad, Omega," he said as the soldier continued to cough, which turned into a deep, harsh wheeze.

***

Omega grabbed desperately at his collar, unsnapping it from around his neck as he choked. It felt like his chest was about to implode on itself, as if he was drowning. Struggling to free himself of the feeling, he disassembled the chest piece of his armor and pulled off the shirt underneath it. His chest bulged; something squirmed beneath his skin.

No one had time to scream, not even Omega himself as his ribcage began to crack beneath his skin. His coughing stopped; he could no longer breathe. All he could do is stare in agony as blood welled up at his cracked, broken sternum, a small head poking out from where his heart should have been.

He looked around the room at all the frightened, pale faces of the members of his species. He had never really felt a part of them, not even in his final thoughts.

_…._

In his mind he was back in Violet's weapon cabinet, holding two dozen donuts in his arms. The door to her pod gave a low hiss as Violet and an under-dressed Alpha entered the room, their arms linked. Through the small crack of where the weapon cabinet door met the base, Omega could see that Violet was smiling a smile like he had never seen before. Her usual green cheeks were a deep, dark red that extended toward her antennae. She looked flushed like she did after completing an obstacle course, or coming to a gradual stop after a long run. But her expression was different this time.

She stopped near the doorway and began to dismantle her armor, and that's when Omega realized the armor he saw earlier wasn't Violet's at all. It was Alpha's. The plasma rifle probably was, too.

Violet shyly glanced at Alpha, the outline of her muscular form exemplified by the tight-fitting underclothes all Irken Elites wore underneath their armor. She wrapped her arms around her chest and stomach timidly, and looked away.

Alpha approached her, his long, bare fingers brushing against her cheek. He cupped his hand against her jaw, running his other over her shoulder to the low base of her back. Violet leaned into Alpha, breathing him in. She buried her lips into the nape of his neck as she wrapped her arms around him, drawing him close.

Omega felt his face reddening from a range of emotions: heart-shattering disappointment, hurt, anger, shame, pain – but most of all, anger. Pain was secondary, but it nursed his anger, his hatred. How dare she choose Alpha over him? Someone who repeatedly ridiculed him, belittled him, humiliated him! He would not let him have her. If Omega couldn't have her, no one would, ever. Even if it meant death for her. For Alpha, too. For them all.

A dim amount of light was all he needed to see the bundle of grenades wrapped next to his feet. He considered revenge for a moment, struggling to comprehend what the consequences would be if he acted on his impulses. Tears fell from Omega's eyes as he leaned his back against the wall of the weapons cabinet. He slid down it, spilling the donuts into his lap.

Omega hardly dared to peek through the crack of the cabinet again; Alpha and Violet's hushed voices told him all he needed to realize what they were doing. He picked up a donut and struggled to eat it, muffling his choked, quiet sobs. He shoved another into his mouth, then another. And another. And another.

Before long he had eaten most of the donuts in his lap, at least the ones that weren't wet with his tears. Shaking, he reached across his legs and picked up a grenade from the bundle. He knew that once he pulled the pin, he would have five seconds before he, Alpha, and Violet would be blown into pieces from the proximity of the explosion of an entire bundle of grenades. All it took was one to ignite their end. Just one.

Omega yanked the pin from the explosive. His heart beat in his throat and sunk deep into his squeedlyspooch all at once.

_Five…_

_Four…_

Violet moaned something unintelligible.

_Three…_

_Two…_

Omega plugged the pin back into the grenade. He couldn't do it. Omega's fingers wrapped around the pin, and his wrist shook. Internally, he argued with his feelings. When it really came down to it, he couldn't destroy himself or anyone of his species, no matter how much he wanted to. Something in him kept him from pulling the pin out again.

He let the grenade slip from his grip onto the pile of donuts on his lap. He closed his wet, burning eyes, and rubbed the tears from his chin and cheeks.

_…._

The pain Omega felt then was so much more than what he felt now. He peered at the creature poking though his chest. It had a smooth, beige carapace beneath the layer of slick, milky pink blood from Omega's insides. It reared its head and screamed a high-pitched, gritty scream. Omega knew then that his death was inevitable.

In his final act he looked to Violet. Her purple eyes were wide with horror, her mouth agape as she stared into Omega's chest. Her face and chest were covered in his blood. And even in her fear, she looked beautiful. He was grateful that he didn't destroy his small squadron of three that day, just so he could look at her directly in the last moment of his life.

The creature leaped from the soldier's chest onto the table in front of his body. It screeched, its beady black eyes darting from side to side. Every Irken jumped from their seats except for Violet, who turned her head to vomit.

"Destroy it!" Tau yelled to his palace guards, pointing at the alien creature. They rushed in front of their Tallest, raising their shock spears to strike it, but its tail dislodged from its body as a plasma bullet struck it right where the tail met the alien's backside. Alpha had drawn his plasma pistol quicker than the palace guards could react.

Green acid sprayed from the alien's wound, splattering onto the table and the floor. Smoke rose up from the contact areas and as it ate effortlessly through the metal. The tail quivered and jerked all on its own, sending more acid in the other direction. Jek jumped in front of Dirk, who was at the forefront of the stream of acid, and pushed him to the ground. She fell backwards on top of him, causing them both to miss the acid spray by just a fraction of a second.

The alien shrieked in anguish, and jumped onto Violet. Acid dribbled onto her lap and she let out a long, tortured scream as it burned though her armor, underclothes, and into her legs. Alpha moved quickly in an attempt to save her. But just as fast, the alien crawled up to Violet's chest. It wrapped itself around her neck and scuttled across her face before leaping into a low-hanging vent above her, disappearing from sight.


	7. Cypher Six

"Your plan has proceeded flawlessly, my Almighty Tallest," Cypher Six reported. One leg was crossed over the other, their hands clasped comfortably on one knee. "Tallest Tau is as good as dead, and no one will live to remember his name."

Tallest Zeta lounged in her command chair aboard the Massive, a service drone holding a plateful of mini-cakes beside of her on his back. She reached over leisurely and plucked one from the plate, smiling to herself. "Well done, my Cypher," she said, taking a bite out of the cake. "Your appetite for betrayal and destruction is why I chose you for this mission. It seems I chose well."

Cypher Six bowed their head. "I am humbled by your opinion of me."

"But the job isn't done yet," Tallest Zeta warned, her tone becoming more stern. "He may be as good as dead, but I want him _dead_ dead. Make sure when he dies, his PAK is destroyed. I do not want his knowledge in my collective."

"Your will be done, my Tallest," Cypher said. "I will contact you when it's done."

Tallest Zeta raised her hand. "A moment before you go, Cypher."

Cypher's eyes widened questioningly. "Yes, my Tallest?"

"When you find that alien, I want to brought to me," she said firmly. "Cypher One is exceptionally slow in their progress with the alien prototypes; I'm thinking bringing one to one of the Empire's laboratories would speed things along."

"I will not fail you, my Tallest. Cypher Six out."

Dirk turned off his datapad and collapsed it, sticking it into his pocket. He turned the lights in the room back on, and made himself appear as if he was busy for when Jek returned. Killing Tau would not be an easy task; he had been preparing himself his entire life for it, and yet he still wasn't sure exactly how he was going to do it.

And then there was the alien and Cypher One to worry about.

"I brought us some drinks," Jek said as she entered the room, locking the door behind her. She tried to seem cheerful, but Dirk knew she was far from it.

He liked to believe that he knew everything about Jek. They had been together since birth, and inseparable. It was both the perfect cover-up and the biggest hindrance for Dirk's missions as Cypher Six. But it was part of his programming to fixate on a single Irken to use as a shield, slowly feeding them suggestions over time to help him build an alternate persona that he could imprint on, exercise, and wear as a mask to hide his true identity as Cypher Six.

There was never anything special about Jek that gave her the power to create "Dirk", and every aspect of "Dirk's" personality, behavior, mannerisms and speech pattern. She just so happened to be the first Irken he set eyes on, and he was programmed to readily impose on an easy target. It worked better this way, because from within the first few minutes of both of their lives, Jek created her own idea of Dirk that allowed him to convince and reinforce the idea that "Dirk" was real to every other Irken in the Empire.

The only thing Dirk disliked about his fabricated personality was his involuntary tendency to act and feel in ways that Jek would anticipate of "Dirk". Her belief in "Dirk" caused him to undergo periods in which what "Dirk" was feeling was so real and genuine to him that he felt he truly was "Dirk", and Cypher Six was the constructed identity. The impression and suggestion of "Dirk" could be so strong, Dirk felt that he and Jek undeniably had a genuine relationship, going as far as to exercise the benevolent emotions that the personality inflicted on him through impulsive actions of kindness, gratitude, love, and sometimes lust.

There were many nights they had spent in each other's company. Sometimes as Jek lay beside him he wondered if she realized just how lonely she was, to seek the company of someone that wasn't real – someone she had been fooled to love and to trust. Even less times Dirk felt almost sorry for Jek, that she would always believe she was never alone when in truth, that's all she was.

"Thanks," Dirk said, accepting the drink. It was an Irken Conquest Red flavored Bubble Sucky, his favorite.

Jek sat down next to him on a crate labeled "Gears, Screws, Misc. Headless Bodies". She sipped on her drink, looking nervously at the vent overhead.

They sat in the transport ship's cramped storage pod, and were to stay there until the quarantine was lifted. Tallest Tau issued an order that no Irken was to be alone, and that each pair of Irkens would secure a different part of the ship. For Dirk and Jek, that happened to be the storage pod. It was a far better fate than what most of the other Navigators were given; some of them had been ordered to search the vents for the alien creature that burst from the chest of the small soldier two days prior. Anyone that found it was to kill it on sight. Of course, Dirk had different orders.

"I wouldn't worry too much," Dirk said, offering Jek a reassuring grin. "If that thing comes in here, we have shock spears to protect us. And each other."

Jek smiled weakly, unconvinced. "But you saw what it did to that soldier. What if someone else has one inside them? What if we all do now, since we were exposed to the creature when it came out of his chest? Would a shock spear really stop it? How do we kill something that bleeds freaking acid?" Her ruby eyes narrowed, grimacing as she peered back up at the vent. "I don't want to end up like that soldier. I refuse to die here."

Dirk said nothing.

Jek gritted her teeth and took off her headset, placing it on the storage crate beside her. She rubbed the smooth, sensitive skin where the headset had been.

"Why are you taking your headset off?" Dirk asked. "Aren't you supposed to be communicating with the power station team?"

Jek shook her head. "Not anymore. They're all dead now, probably."

Dirk shot her a questioning look.

She looked him in the eyes, her expression strained. "I know what I saw, Dirk. Dozens of foreign biosignatures converging on the Irkens at the power station. When the power came back on, they disappeared. There was probably interference of some kind with the power surge the team caused. I believe those foreign signatures were creatures like the one that's up in the vents. One of those..." she paused for a moment, waving her hands around as she tried to conjure up the right word, " _aliens_."

When Dirk didn't say anything, Jek sighed, and wrapped her hands around the exposed part of her torso. "I was cut off from them hours ago."

"I wouldn't give up just yet," he said, setting her headset into her lap. "And even if they're dead, this is your lifeline. What if something happened to _you_?"

Jek nodded, and picked up the headset with both of her hands. She eyed it, as if she seemed to wonder just what it meant to her.

Dirk felt something warm and sticky hit his cheek. He touched it, and the viscous blood of an Irken pulled away along with his fingers. Jek sprung up, dashing for the shock spears that leaned against the door. She grabbed them both just as the vent burst open overhead of Dirk, revealing a sleek, black carapace and a long, dark, slender body. It sniffed the air curiously, drooling a thick, translucent slime onto Dirk's face as he stared up at it.

Dirk felt his insides churn. He was unprepared for the alien, and didn't expect its surprisingly large size only several hours after birth. It must have been feeding ever since then.

A crackling sound ripped through the silence as Jek ignited the shock spears. She held one in both hands, visibly shaking as she inched slowly toward the vent above Dirk.

"Move, Dirk," she whispered.

Dirk hesitated, but ultimately listened to her. He scooted gradually away across the adjacent crates, careful to make no sudden movements. The alien stared at Dirk, gurgling and grinding its jaws together. His muscles felt heavy, and his head spun. Those seconds felt like minutes to him, and he was sure Jek was feeling it too.

He ended up farther away from the alien than Jek, who was stepping closer still. She knocked the shock spears together every time the alien glanced to Dirk, drawing its attention to her instead.

"You're an ugly one," she muttered, snapping the shock spears together. She snapped them again, and again. The alien groaned, curling its back either in fear or in anger. Jek slid her hands farther down the shock spears, giving them more length. She extended them up toward the alien. It hissed lowly.

"Make the loudest noise you can, Dirk," Jek said, positioning herself right beneath the alien in the vent. Her voice trembled.

Dirk screamed as loud as he could. The alien turned its head to look at him, and Jek lodged the shock spears into the vent. The electricity jarred the alien, causing it to lose its hold on the metal alloy of the vent. It dropped to the floor below where Jek stood, and leapt toward her with its claws bared.

It missed her, but managed to grab the bottom part of her uniform, shredding it. With the shock spears still in hand, Jek backed away as quickly as she could without falling back on her heels. The alien was quick, scrambling over crates with unbroken, serpent-like movements despite its obstacles. It stood on all fours up to Jek's chest, and was three times as long as it was tall.

When it was at a somewhat safe distance, Jek lunged the shock spears at the alien. It dodged her attack, and Jek was running out of room to go. A long, chain-like tail whipped past her head and retracted just as quickly as it came. Jek held the shock spears up on instinct and in defense.

Dirk could sense her fear. He wondered if he should save her or just watch her die, and what he would feel, if anything, when and if she did. Who would he be? Who would he become?

But his mission came first. It always came first.

"My Tallest Tau," Dirk said into his headset, "requesting backup in the storage room. The alien is here. It's killed someone in the vents."

Dirk had a plan.

Jek kicked a crate at the alien as it advanced closer to her still. The alien leapt over it with ease; but as it jumped, Jek held the shock spears out in front of her, the tips slightly apart. One grazed the hard underbelly of the creature, and it screeched out in surprise. If it felt any pain, it gave no indication that it had. It twitched, otherwise motionless where it fell on the ground. Jek seized the moment to jab it with both shock spears at once, right onto its carapace.

Jek heaved a heavy breath, and the alien stopped moving.

"Jek! Are you alright?" Dirk called out from across the room, making his way gradually toward her over the messy piles and clutter of the crates.

Jek stood still, the shock spears still activated and in hand. She stared at the unmoving alien, appearing skeptical.

Tallest Tau entered the room with a palace guard just then, the one called Nexus. He said nothing, and hovered around any opposing crates to the alien on the floor. He pointed to it, and Nexus shocked it with her own shock spear. It didn't move. She nodded definitively.

"Looks like it's dead," Tau said, turning to Jek. "Good job, pilot."

Jek usually would have been elated with the praise, but she offered the Tallest a curt nod. Questions seemed to loom in her mind.

Dirk knew he had to move quickly. He knew a shock spear couldn't kill an alien; a shock spear wouldn't even kill an Irken unless given a couple shocks at full power. Irkens were much softer and fleshy; the alien was hard and durable. There was no way it was dead. They were foolish to underestimate it.

He finally reached Jek, and stood closest to the door.

"Alright, round it up. And be careful of any blood," Tau instructed. Nexus bent down close to the alien, daring to touch it and turn it over to check for any acid blood.

Jek tensed, gripping the shock spears harder.

Tallest Tau waved a hand at her. "You can put those shock spears down now, pilot. I know it must have been very scary and overwhelming for you, but -"

Nexus went from the floor to the air in less than a moment. Her back was turned to the alien's tail, which struck her between her shoulder blades and lifted her off of her feet, re-animating in an instant.

Nexus gripped her hands around the tail in her chest in a desperate attempt to wriggle free. But the alien was faster, whipping Nexus around to face her. The Irken's eyes were wide and bright with horror as the alien gave an ear-piercing screech of triumph. Its opened mouth revealed a second set of inner mandibles, which struck forward at Nexus's chest, busting through her ribcage. When the inner mandibles retracted, they pulled out Nexus's heart, still beating.

Tallest Tau hovered backward into the wall behind him, several feet away from the alien. He was covered in his palace guard's pink blood; he looked much greener than usual, more than what Dirk had ever seen. Jek mirrored her Tallest's actions hesitantly, but realized it was far too late to save Nexus.

That's when Dirk slipped underneath the glass door to the storage room, and hit the override button on the other side of the wall. He used the master code from Tau's personal computer to ensure that once the door was closed, it closed for good.

Part of him felt elated, powerful – victorious. The other part grieved for what he was leaving behind.

"Dirk!" he heard Jek cry out as the door sealed between them. She ran up to the glass, pushing the open button over and over again. She quickly understood that the door was not going to open, and banged her fists against the glass desperately.

"Dirk! _Dirk!_ "

All Dirk could do was watch Jek's expressions change.


	8. Mortality

"Dirk! _Dirk!_ "

Jek banged her fists against the door as hard as she could, and tried the open button again. Dirk had overridden the door controls so that they couldn't be open without an admin code. Jek's hands fumbled as she lifted the safety glass of the door controls on her side, and a spark of electricity jumped up at her. She looked back through the glass to see Dirk dismantling the door controls on the outside, burning them with two precision laser cutters provided by his PAK.

"Dirk, why are you doing this?" She banged on the glass harder, her voice desperate and laced with terror. Jek's breath was so heavy it fogged the glass between them. Condensation started to form. Dirk's form disappeared from sight.

Her attention was drawn back to the carnage behind her as the alien gave a delighted scream, drawing a large hand back and digging its claws into Nexus's face, shredding it. Nexus's neck gave a low, disgusting crack. Her bottom jaw hung limply aside, her tongue lolling over the side still attached.

Jek started to cry. It was a slow, silent, terrified, wide-eyed cry.

"Pilot!"

Jek turned to Tallest Tau, blinking tears from her eyes. He was drizzled with Nexus's blood, glimmering and wet. It formed spidery pink veins across the entirety of his tall, lithe body. His expression was anguished and tired. He gave no indication of surprise, shock, or fear.

"Forget him. He's not coming back," Tau said, frowning. "Pick up those shock spears. We might be able to disable the alien long enough to figure out how to get out of here," he suggested, his voice exceptionally calm for the situation.

"We're not going to kill it?" Jek asked, confused.

"I don't think it can be killed with the resources we have without it spilling acid blood everywhere. There's no telling what destruction it could cause then."

Tallest Tau had a point. Jek's eyes darted to the shock spears she dropped at her feet. She may not have Dirk to fight for anymore, but she ultimately always had her Tallest. At least, for now.

She picked up the shock spears and reignited them, sending out waves of electricity crackling through the sounds of the alien enjoying its dismemberment of Nexus's body. She tossed one to Tallest Tau. He caught it with a certain practiced grace.

It never really occurred to Jek until now that Tau had a past, an education and place in Irken society before he became Tallest. It pained her that she would never get to ask him about his life, who he was and how he came to be. She suddenly had so many questions to ask, so many things she wanted to know.

And she would never truly know Dirk, either. The one she lived for, thrived with. Her first friend, her first romantic interest, her first… _everything_. The one that left them here to die. Left _her_ here to die.

The exchange of the shock spear caught the alien's attention. It glanced away from Nexus's body, eying Jek and Tau with suspicion. Its movements seemed excited rather than sluggish despite the energy it expended attacking Nexus and viciously tearing her apart.

_It could feed off of fear,_ Jek thought, but it was fleeting.

The alien leapt forward toward Jek. She ducked, and the alien missed her by a large margin. It landed on the wall behind her, walked upward toward the ceiling and clung there, upside down. That would be a problem.

"Should we call for backup?" Jek asked quietly, looking to her leader for guidance.

Tau scoffed, his eyes locked on the alien above them. "You really want others to come and end up like her? Like Nexus?" He jerked his head into the direction of the mangled body of his palace guard. The way he said her name was gentle, almost endearing. He was mourning her.

Jek shook her head, and decided to not ask any more questions.

Tau took his shock spear and thrust it up at the alien, using both of his hands. The alien crawled quickly out of the way, and Tau went for it again. He missed a second time, but put some serious dents into the alloy ceiling; unfortunately, the alloy wasn't conductive like the alloy the vent was crafted from.

Jek ran underneath the alien, holding her shock spear ready. She didn't have quite the reach as Tallest Tau did, being much taller than her, but her strength was in agility. Jek realized waiting would never work, and she used her PAK's legs to climb up onto a pile of crates near the center of the room that lead to a higher pile. She was so close to the ceiling that if she put her arm up her hand would easily touch it.

Anytime the alien moved, Tau followed it with his shock spear pointed right at its carapace. And anywhere the alien moved, Jek was also not too far away. This made the creature agitated. Its movements became less and less calculated. It hissed in frustration, aware that it was being trapped.

Just as Jek reached out with her spear to push the creature back, it turned on itself, and bit into its tail. Acid poured from the self-inflicted wound, spilling out overhead of Tallest Tau. He tried to shield himself from the acid by putting his hands up over his face, but the acid seeped too quickly. His entire head went up in smoke. The acid oozed down his neck toward his chest and PAK. He cried out in pain, rubbing vigorously at his eyes out of instinct. It only worsened his condition. The gauntlets Tau wore over his forearms began to melt into the thin skin underneath before he was able to move out of way of the waterfall of acid. The acid that didn't land on Tau hit the floor, and began melting a hole straight through it.

Tallest Tau's knees buckled and he fell back onto his rear, sitting up against a nearby crate as the acid blood from the alien's tail dribbled at his feet. His shock spear lay beside him, still active.

"My Tallest!" Jek jumped from the crates despite the height, and rushed around the acid puddle that formed in front of Tau and was now _part_ of Tau. He was being reduced to liquid flesh right before her eyes. He was hauntingly quiet except for a constant, anguished moan; he had no tongue left to speak, or any eyes left to see. What was left of his face was diminished to pieces of yellowed skin that clung to the one side of his skull, dripping viscously onto his chest plate.

All she could do was watch him die.

And she would be next.

She would die with only her service to the Empire to prove that she existed. Within minutes her seat aboard the Massive would be filled with another body ready to fulfill her role, if it wasn't already. A control brain would anticipate the uptake of her personal knowledge accumulated throughout her life, and it would be passed on to another Irken smeet sometime in the future. The name "Jek" would be eventually given to someone else, and her personality would belong to a stranger. Any and every sense of her identity would be gone, just like the soldier's. Just like Nexus's. Just like Tallest Tau's.

Jek still had questions she wanted answers for. She had things she wanted to do, things she wanted to see, to _experience_ still. All of it was stripped from her because of Dirk for reasons she didn't – and never would – understand.

_No. I refuse to die here._

Jek picked up Tallest Tau's shock spear and well as her own. She threw one at the alien, lodging it into the ceiling next to it. It screamed in anger and flicked its tail, sending a thin string of acid at Jek. It splashed her shoulder quickly eating through the cloth of her right shoulder guard. She ripped it off and threw it to the ground, her sleeve and glove included.

The alien jumped off of the ceiling and onto the floor. It ran, approaching Jek, its injured tail leaving a path of acid behind it. Jek reared her shock spear and threw it straight at the alien, pointed right for the alien's face. The creature slipped through the melted hole in the floor just as the shock spear flew past its head, sticking into the side of a crate in its flight path.

All went quiet.

Jek heaved a sigh, becoming painfully aware of the stinging sensation on her right shoulder. Although she had stripped off her clothes, some of the acid still made its way onto her skin. She craned her neck to try and evaluate the wound, and all she could see was a concave hole surrounded by fleshy, dark green skin. No blood. But it hurt like hell.

She would check the real damage later. The important thing was the silence. Silence hardly ever meant anything good.

Jek looked ahead to Tallest Tau. The burning stopped too late. The top part of his skull was gone, leaving his half-melted brain and upper sinus cavities open and visible. His forearms were also completely disintegrated. His hands were separated from the rest of his arms and lay limply at his waist beside him.

She got a closer look, leaning her Tallest's remains forward slightly. The only parts of him that were untouched by the acid was his legs, and most surprisingly, his PAK. The PAK seemed to contain something that resisted acid damage; acid definitely landed on the PAK after the alien injured itself, but there was no sign of any impairment or that the acid had ever been there at all.

She placed her hands on the PAK, running them along the curvature of its sides. Jek felt a sense of closeness and intimacy with her leader for the first time after she spent most of her life on the Massive trying to please him, and he never even knew her name. Everything about her Tallest was contained there. His life, his likes and dislikes, his memories, all of his knowledge.

_All of his knowledge…_

Jek knew that if this was going to work, she would have to move quickly. Dirk or the creature could come back at any time. Tallest Tau's knowledge was too important to lose. If Dirk is defective or whatever he is, he might use Tau's knowledge wrongly or prevent it from entering the collective entirely. The more Irkens knew about the creatures, the more they would be able to fight against them and prevent them from destroying their race. Since Tau was no longer alive to tell his story, the only part of him that lived on was a core memory disk. If PAKs had those, anyway. They should have something of the like. Jek knew that it was possible to replay the past memories of any Irken when connected to a control brain, which was often done for criminals of the Irken Empire on the planet Judgementia.

But Jek didn't know how PAKs worked exactly, or if any Irken fully did. They just relied on them to work with their brains to keep their bodies functioning, and to provide them with a few essential tools such as a jetpack, a communicator, ray guns and a precision laser cutter. Since Jek was always sitting safely on the Massive, she hardly ever used any of these features, and often forgot she was capable of doing so.

She initiated the laser cutter. A single spidery arm protruded from the PAK. She angled it so it would cut the two nodes that held the PAK to Tau's body, just above the two holes made in every Irken's spine within seconds of their birth. The green laser beam cut through it evenly, and the PAK fell backward off of Tau's spine with a bulky _thud_.

She tugged the PAK away from his body and flipped it over, round side down. His PAK was much larger than hers to accommodate his superior, taller stature. Larger and heavy. No wonder the Tallest needed levitation for their personal mobility.

Jek began cutting where the "shell" part of the PAK fused with the flat underside of it, all the way around, and hoped she wouldn't destroy anything important inside. The PAK soon fell apart and lay open-faced, revealing an intricate motherboard that spanned the entire surface area on the inside. Being a Navigator, Jek often performed maintenance on many different computers, but she had never seen something so complex and labyrinthine as this. It occurred to her that the core memory disk could be built into the motherboard, thus impossible to separate without ruining the entire PAK.

But she was in luck. After some feeling and fiddling around, Jek found a tab sticking up from the rest of the motherboard. She pressed it in and it pushed out farther, allowing her to pluck it out. It was no bigger than the tip of her finger, plain and silver with no indication of what it was: no writing, no numbers, no symbols - nothing. Something about it seemed newer than the rest of the inner parts, being shinier and less aged-looking. If anything was going to be Tau's memory disk, the tiny silver piece would be a good candidate.

Jek stuck it into her robe pocket, and looked around for a way out. There was no way she was going in the same direction as the alien had, through the burned hole in the floor. The only other option was the vent overhead.

The spider legs of her PAK sprawled out from her body, carrying her toward the vent. Using the legs she climbed up on another pile of crates and leapt forward, catching the edge of the vent. Jek crawled inside, unaware of what lay ahead.


	9. Escape

With Tau and Jek undoubtedly dead and out of the way, Dirk moved to phase two of his plan: to deliver an alien specimen to his Tallest, Tallest Zeta. He would need to pilot the transport ship back to the Massive, alien in tow.

Dirk assumed that with the alien full from its large meal, it would seek a secluded place to rest until it was time to feed again. If he was lucky, that time would be later than sooner. That would buy him enough time to pilot the ship without having to worry about it attacking anyone.

He retrieved all of the remaining survivors, and escorted them to the dining hall. Some were reluctant to follow him out of their quarantine rooms, but the more survivors they saw doing the same, the more comfortable they became with the idea. It was clear that something unusual had happened, and they all awaited Dirk's explanation.

"Tallest Tau is dead."

Looks of disbelief reflected in their eyes. Libby in particular seemed crushed and disheartened. One of the engineers she was found with put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

"The Irken that piloted us here is also dead. And as co-pilot, I'm assuming command of the ship by hierarchical order," Dirk continued, standing straight with his hands clasped behind his back. Behind him was the bloodstain left by Omega, dull and faded from a futile attempt to clean it. "We are going to fly back to the Massive to seek professional attention and care for our wounded, and to ensure that we are not being parasitized."

"Oh, really?" the largest soldier asked, the only one of his squadron capable of being present. He pushed his chair behind him as he stood, and swaggered around the table to Dirk. Wide, watery, suspicious, angry eyes, all eyes, watched him. "And what makes you think that hierarchical order automatically grants you the ability to make decisions for the rest of us?"

All eyes looked to Dirk.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Dirk asked coldly, his eyes narrowing.

"Alpha of the 51st Squadron, Irken Elite," Alpha answered, even though he seemed to recognize that the question as rhetorical. "And you're just a Navigator, having sat comfortably aboard the Massive your entire life at a glorified, high-tech help desk."

Dirk snickered lowly beneath his high collar, his voice vibrating dully against the fabric. His snicker turned into a chuckle, and his chuckle crescendoed into a full-bodied, robust laugh. He laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks. Dirk leaned forward as he went weak in the knees. He slapped a hand to his forehead, shaking his head in humored disbelief.

Alpha's air of confidence and tenacity dwindled the more his confusion proliferated in his mind. He shot an uneasy glance to the other survivors seated at the table. They all offered him varying degrees of an uneasy look in return.

"Comfortable? Nothing about my life has been comfortable!" Dirk finally said, after a wheezing gasp for air. He straightened his back again, returning to his stiff, angular stance. "With all your training, you're still obviously just an ignorant, unintelligible grunt incapable of understanding the bigger picture."

Alpha's jaw set tightly, and he drew his massive arm back, fingers curled into a hard, balled fist. He lunged at Dirk, aiming right for his face. Dirk caught Alpha's fist with one hand, wrapping his fingers around the soldier's fist and clamping hard. Within seconds Alpha's knuckles flattened and shattered with a sickening _crunch_ as the bones in his hands were broken a few at a time.

Alpha grunted in pain but did not scream out. His face turned red and hot, beads of sweat just beginning to lace the edges of his forehead. He quickly brought back his other arm and began to swing, but he was still too slow.

An arm extended from Dirk's PAK and punched through the front of the soldier's skull. His brains exploded backward, exposing a bloodied robotic hand. The hand clenched and retracted, ripping pieces of the soldier's brain out with it. Alpha's red eyes rolled into their sockets. His body wobbled for a moment before falling over sideways with a heavy _thunk_. The innards of his skull oozed from his forehead, adding to the puddle of flesh and blood on the floor.

"So," Dirk asked, "any more questions?"  


***

Jek crawled on her hands and knees in the vent shaft. She had been unsuccessful in finding a way out so far, and she was beginning to wonder if she was going in circles somehow.

The time to herself caused her to think about what events had happened in their four days on Portia. In one day they became aware of a mysterious something killing off the portal workers for over a hundred days without any word from Invader Blue that such a massacre was occurring, and not one of the survivors knew who Invader Blue was. The second day, a soldier died from the mysterious something, and was classified as a parasite. They were put in quarantine and only allowed to come out at designated times for food or drink. By the fourth day, Dirk betrayed her and his Tallest, and Tau and his presumably favorite palace guard died. And now Jek was here, crawling about the vents like a slaughtering rat person on the planet Blorch, looking for a way out.

A faint sound ahead of her caught her attention. Jek stopped cold, listening closely. It was a pit-pat type of sound, as if something else was moving around inside the vent. She heard the sound again, louder and closer this time. She considered going back the way she came, but it would impede her progress.

Two legs of her PAK extended in front of her, armed with a ray gun on both. She quieted her breathing and waited, the sound growing louder still. Jek could feel the vibration from the movement getting stronger, and braced herself.

She was met face to face with another pair of ray guns, and a bright set of violet eyes.

"Tallest Almighty, Pilot, I thought you were that _thing_ for a second."

"And I you," Jek replied, withdrawing her ray guns back into her PAK. The other Irken also lowered her weapons. It took Jek a moment to recognize her: she was the soldier that got burned with acid when her squad leader shot the newborn creature after it landed in her lap and leaped into the vent.

The soldier turned on a tactical flashlight, illuminating the small space around them. Jek blinked in surprise, and she rubbed them at the discomfort. Her ruby eyes were one of the more sensitive eye colors of her race. Once they adjusted to the light, she was able to get a better look at the soldier.

She looked different now. Her once smooth face was now riddled with hills and valleys of lightened, almost yellowed skin on the left side. Her left eye was squinted slightly from the puffiness and irritation of her recent wound, her eyelashes still burnt off on that side. Her wrinkled, charred knees were bare from the lacking length of her medical gown. In some places she still wore bandages, such as on her arms and around her ankles.

"It would be really great if you didn't stare," the soldier said, pulling her gown down over her knees.

Jek's cheeks felt hot, and she immediately felt a pang of guilt and remorse. "I'm so sorry," she apologized. "I didn't realize – "

"Look, it's cool," the soldier said, extending her hand to Jek. "I'm Violet of the 51st Squadron, Irken Elite. My squaddies call be Beta sometimes as a joke. Well, at least they used to when they were alive."

Jek shook Violet's hand. "I'm Jek. I was a Navigator on the Massive for fourteen years." She squeezed Violet's hand slightly as a means to comfort her. "I'm sorry. It seems we all have lost friends lately."

"Yeah, whatever. Quit apologizing for everything. It's weird," Violet muttered, taking back her hand. "Look, I was tired of being in the medical bay, laying there all useless while everyone else was in quarantine. While I was up here, I heard that co-pilot say something about the quarantine being lifted and everyone was supposed to go to the dining hall, so I followed the vent there."

"Are you talking about Dirk?" Jek breathed, her eyes wide.

Violet shrugged her massive shoulders. "I dunno, the weird-looking one. With the scary green eyes?" She pulled her eyelids apart with a thumb and forefinger, mimicking Dirk's features. "Anyway, he's gone totally crazy. He killed Alpha. Shoved a PAK fist right through his head when he started asking questions."

"No way…"

"Yes way!" Violet hissed, her fists balling up in anger. "That scrawny freak killed my squad leader, the only person I had left to live for!" Her lip curled, the acid-burned side of her face looking even more grotesque in the shadows. "I… I _loved_ him."

Jek went silent, unsure of what to say. She felt like she had lost someone she loved, too.

Violet wiped a tear from her cheek, and swallowed hard. "So, is it true that the Tallest is dead?"

"Yes," Jek answered quietly. She felt for the silver piece in her pocket. It was still there. "Dirk locked the Tallest, his palace guard, Nexus, and I into the storage room we were quarantined in by burning the override controls from the outside. The alien was in the room with us. Tallest Tau and Nexus died. The only reason I escaped was because the alien went through a hole in the floor created by acid damage. I guess it was tired of fighting."

"But you're not dead."

"No? I'm alive… obviously."

"Yeah, obviously. But the weirdo said you died."

Jek felt an impassable lump in her throat. "What?"

"Yeah," Violet said. "I was surprised to find you up here, but I also felt like he was lying about most of his story anyway."

Jek said nothing, but felt a strong wave of dejection. If Dirk assumed she was dead, then she was meant to die in there with her Tallest and Nexus. He wanted her to die.

Violet noticed that Jek wasn't taking the news well. "Alright, well, we should get going before something else stupid happens." She tied the flashlight around her neck with the waist cord from her medical gown. The gown came undone, opening up and exposing her backside. She didn't seem to mind the exposure, but Jek was silently glad Violet was wearing undergarments.

"I know a way out," Violet explained. She swiveled the flashlight to her right. "Down that way and two lefts from there is the garbage disposal. Inside the garbage disposal is a chute that leads outside, because as we all know, us Irkens just dump and leave our garbage all across the galaxy. Disgusting but convenient, especially for you and me right now."

"And if we get outside, I can pilot one of the support ships back to the Massive."

"Actually, Pilot, I don't think you want to do that," Violet said, and grimaced nervously. "I don't think we would be received well on the Massive."

Jek cocked her head aside, confused. "Why do you say that?"

"Dirk isn't acting alone on this," Violet mused. "I think he's receiving orders from someone higher up. I don't know how high it goes, but I'm guessing it's gotta be pretty high. I've seen this kind of thing before, an Irken Elite that we were told 'defected' tried to pull some crazy stuff like this. Eventually he just… disappeared without a trace."

Jek tried to take in what Violet was telling her, but it felt like there were things missing from her explanation. "I don't understand, but you can tell me more about it when we're off this rock," she said. "I'll fly us anywhere safe. I'll trust your judgment with that."

Violet nodded. "To Irk it is, then. I think I've got a buddy that can help us there."

Jek returned the nod.

Violet lead the way through the vent, making her way up to their first left turn. The way Violet's flashlight swung from her neck made Jek feel kind of nauseous, but it was a far more polite thing to look at than Violet's butt.  


***

Dirk stood on the command center of the transport ship behind two Irken Navigators, Kip and Nibbler. Behind him were the rest of the Irken survivors in chains, their ankles and wrists shackled together like animals. Some sat and some stood, others leaned on each other for physical and emotional support.

"You're a monster. When we get back to the Massive, everyone will know what you've done!"

Dirk turned around to see Libby standing, red-faced and eyes swollen from the onslaught of tears after Alpha's death. He considered her for a moment, and decided she wasn't worth any trouble.

"That's the point," he said coolly. "Now be quiet. I don't want to make another example of the lot of you."

Dirk returned his focus to the two other Navigators, who were visibly nervous. "Now, Nibbler, set your coordinates and start up the engines. Kip, be ready with hyperdrive once we exit the atmosphere and leave orbit."

The Navigators said nothing, but did as they were told. Satisfied, Dirk walked over to the captain's chair and took a seat, the plush leather feeling more than comfortable against his body. He wriggled into it snugly, and relaxed his arms on the arm rests.  


***

"Whoa, I think we're moving!" Violet exclaimed, hastening her pace. "We've gotta get going – fast. The second left is just a couple footsteps away."

They rounded the second left, which lead them in a half-circle. Little did they know, they were just above the command center of the transport ship, and they didn't go unnoticed.  


***

"Stop the ship."

Kip craned his neck over his seat. "We just lifted off. If we land now – "

"Stop. The. _Ship_ ," Dirk reiterated, getting to his feet. He held up a hand to Kip as he began opening his mouth again, signaling him to be silent.

Dirk listened closely. He could hear the pit-pat sounds of something in the vent shaft overhead. If he was right about the alien, it would be hiding somewhere, asleep and digesting its meal. Besides that, the alien was light on its feet and silent when it moved. It also didn't have eight legs.

He initiated the spidery legs of his PAK, which carried him quickly right underneath the sound. One of the legs retracted and returned with a robotic hand, the same one that took Alpha's life less than an hour earlier. Dirk lurched the hand up toward the ceiling, busting a hole through it. There was a metallic crunch as the hand squeezed, pulled back, and rejoined its master.

Two legs dangled from the newly-made hole, followed by two shrill, feminine screams.


	10. Privilege Escalation

"Don't let go, Violet!" Jek pleaded, grabbing onto both of Violet's wrists as she tried to pull her up. Violet's claw-like nails dug into the tops of Jek's hands, drawing up tiny, diminutive pink bubbles of blood.

Violet's expression darkened as she peered through the hole beneath her, meeting Dirk's gaze. She looked back up at Jek, her eyes widening with worry.

"It's the weird guy!" she breathed, and swung her body back and forth, trying to gain enough momentum to climb back into the vent. Shredded and sliced wires dangled alongside her legs, flickering with electricity, threatening to burn her skin.

The movement took every bit of Jek's strength to maintain. She pulled back on Violet as hard as she could, hoping the sweat on her palms wouldn't cause Violet to lose her grasp.

"I forgot about you," Dirk called out from down below. He put his hands to his hips. "I didn't think you would live."

Violet snorted and hocked a loogie onto Dirk's face. It landed right on his upper eyelid. He wiped it off in disgust, Violet's saliva sticking to his fingers like webbing as he tried to rid himself of it.

"You thought wrong," Violet snarled. Her toenails caught a sharp piece of metal that extended from the breakage of the vent. Carefully, she used it to hoist herself up, using Jek's arms for support.

Jek crawled backward, pulling Violet into the vent with her. The release of tension caused Jek to fall back and land harshly on her rear, yanking Violet down with her. Violet's chest smacked against Jek's stomach, briefly knocking the air out of both of their lungs.

"My arms have a heartbeat," Jek croaked, rolling away to give Violet room as she lifted herself off of her. She lowered her uniform collar to make breathing a little easier.

Violet chuckled softly, audibly winded, but less so than Jek. "Damn, _Skinny_ , you need to work out more. I thought I was going to break your puny little – _hwah!_ "

Dirk's robot arm snaked its way into the hole. Its fingers widened and reached for anything it could grasp. It found one of Violet's bandaged ankles and pulled her down forcefully, dragging her out of the vent. She disappeared through the break, flailing violently in search of something to hold onto to resist her capture.

Jek heard a loud _fwap,_ and a dull _thud_. She dared to look through the hole. She saw Violet flat on her back, her limbs sprawled out and limp, on the floor of the transport ship's control center.

The robot arm came for her next.

Her PAK activated instantly, her two ray guns returning full-force to face her enemy. She fired an unrelenting stream of rounds from within the vent. The sound of the recoil boomed throughout it, resembling the sounds of distant thunder. Smoke from the charred alloy billowed up around her, obscuring her vision and choking her. Within seconds all of the energy for the ray guns were depleted; it would take several minutes for them to recharge. She waved the smoke away from her face, and saw nothing.

Just then, the ship ricocheted from a rough, unpracticed landing. Jek slid to one side of the vent, smacking up against it as the ship re-settled itself on solid ground. She got back up to her knees, blinking in the fog of the smoke only to see the undamaged robot arm coming straight for her. It lurched forward and grabbed her around her waist, squeezing hard, yanking her from the safety of the vent.

She fully expected to hit the floor, just as Violet did. She closed her eyes and braced herself, stiffening her limbs in preparation for the blow.

"I've got to admit, Jek, you continue to surprise me," Dirk said, the fingers of his robotic hand squeezing in on Jek. She wriggled around in his grasp, pushing down on the hand. "I thought I'd seen the last of you. Maybe I can get some more use out of you since you're already here."

Dirk lowered his robot arm and set Jek down gently on her feet. His PAK's arm retracted, and he pointed over at the pilot's seat across the command center. "Would you kindly take us back to the Massive? After that landing, I no longer trust Nibbler or Kip with the controls. But if _we_ did it together --"

Without warning, Jek reared back her left arm and punched Dirk right between the eyes.

Dirk staggered back, nearly tripping over his heels. He blinked with surprise and reached for the dark green welt that was beginning to swell on his forehead, and his eyes narrowed. "Fine. Why must I do everything myself?"

Jek watched with a mixture of interest and fear as Dirk's eyes began to glow from beneath his irises. The lights of the command center flickered until darkness overtook the room. The ship's computer bellowed out, "Power critical. Systems shutting down."

There was an audible _vrooosh_ as the ship's systems went offline, and the Irkens were left in complete darkness.

"Override initiated. Welcome, Cypher."

_Cypher?_

It took a mere second for the ship to come back online, glowing in a deep, emerald green. Dirk became entranced; behind his eyes Jek recognized the arcane lettering of a script being ran in some type of encrypted code of numbers, letters and symbols.

He was hacking the ship. With his _body_.

Jek ran over to the piloting controls, pushing her way in front of Nibbler at the piloting chair. Jek tried accessing the pilot's interface, only to be met with numerous error pop-up boxes that only contained one thing: an unrecognizable Irken symbol comprised of an Irken head, eyes, and strangely oriented antennae.

"You!" she turned to Nibbler. "Get to the engine room, try draining the power. He can't finish what he's started if the power's off."

Nibbler nodded quickly, and hopped up from his seat toward the engine room.

She turned to Kip. "And you, just… don't touch anything. Go help him or something."

Jek dashed off past the hostages, who peered at her with looks of expectation, suspicion, and fear. She wanted to explain her actions to them, but there was absolutely no time. The longer Dirk had complete access to the ship, the more control he had over it. She had to get to an escape pod. From there, she could use the pod's computer to launch a remote attack against Dirk.

If he was successful in routing the ship back to the Massive, the alien would have access to the largest, most important ship in the Irken Armada. Thousands of Irkens would be put at risk of infection by the creature, and that would undoubtedly shake the foundation of the fleet for the worse.

Beneath her feet the ship lurched upward, nearly knocking her off balance. She was almost there; it occurred to her that she could possibly run into the alien on her way to the pod.

_No! No. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts..._

Jek pulled a blank on the whole "happy thoughts" thing.

But she made her way to the escape pods. There were ten of them that could accommodate one Irken at a time. They looked strikingly similar to Voot Cruisers, the cheapest and most poorly made, outdated ships the Irken Empire had to offer. They were complete garbage made of complete garbage, practically farting through space anywhere they went.

The ship lurched again, and she could feel the increasing velocity of a ship in flight.

_The garbage will do._

Jek entered the first cruiser next to her, throwing herself through the automatically opening windshield of the cockpit. She sat down and started up the tiny purple ship. Inside were controls she considered to be primitive: two levers with red initiatory buttons and a small terminal screen next to a series of different overlay buttons, all capable of performing simple actions, decked out in various shades of purples and grays.

With her finger, she rotated a button counterclockwise to initiate the cruiser's propulsion thrusters to get the craft going. It lifted up slowly and unsteadily, wobbling slightly, but it was still maneuverable. Mostly.

A side-hatch of the transport ship lifted up in front of her, allowing Jek to exit the ship. As she flew out, she noticed Dirk was already flying the ship hundreds of units into the air, heading diagonally upward in preparation to leave the atmosphere of Portia. She reached up instinctively for her headset to secure a channel for communications between her, Nibbler and Kip, but remembered too late that she had left it in the storage room hours prior. The ship's communicator would do just fine, though.

"Nibbler? Kip? Can you hear me?"

There was nothing on the other side of the channel but sharp, ringing static. She tried to re-establish the connection again, but Dirk seemed to have already picked up on her and jammed the signal.

_Tallest damn him!_

Jek wasted no more time with the trivials; Nibble and Kip were sent to the engine room only to succeed if she failed. And even then, draining the ship's power to make it nonoperational would only be bandaging the problem. If Dirk was determined to do so, he would find another way to get to the Massive.

She accessed the cruiser's terminal and opened up a command prompt. By locking the cruiser onto the ship's coordinates, she would be able to autopilot the craft while writing a quick, remote exploit directed at the transport ship's open signals.

Jek started with a simple DOS, Denial of Service, attack against Dirk. She flooded his connection to the ship with as many numbers, letters and symbols as the cruiser's computer could handle. While that ran, Jek sent a series of commands to the transport ship to power down the accelerator, but something went wrong. Her attack was flooding back to her, jamming her connection to the transport ship.

The interface of the cruiser lit up in the same eerie, ghastly green as the transport ship had. The unfamiliar Irken symbol popped up on her interface, locking her out of the ship's computer.

"There's absolutely nothing you can do, Jek," a monotone, robotic voice said over the ship's communications system.

"Why are you doing this?" Jek spat at the communicator. She slammed her fists down on the ship's interface and yanked the levers back and forth in frustration. "This isn't like you, Dirk. You're a fool... _and_ a traitor!"

A red light began to flash overhead. Warning sirens boomed at a frequency so high-pitched, Jek lurched forward in pain and covered her auricle cavities.

"Power systems critical. Overload imminent," the computer reported.

Jek realized all too late.

The rear of the ship exploded, sending Jek flying forward. She smashed her head against the cruiser's windshield. The ship was going down fast. There were only a couple hundred megaunits left between her and Portia's surface.

"Proximity warning. Planetary surface ahead."

"Yeah, no kidding!" Jek hissed. She grabbed hold of the levers and pulled up as hard as she could, rotating the ship upward to slow her angular momentum toward the rocky, desolate surface of Portia. She hardly seemed to slow down. And if things couldn't get any worse, ahead of her Jek saw a large, ominous crevice in the distance. If she did land the ship, her trajectory was going to send her over the edge.

But she had to hope it wouldn't. There was no time to change her fate.

The ship came in hot, leaving a trail of smoke from the exploded power core. It nosedived onto Portia's surface, slamming into the superficial, jagged rock that made up the ground. The cruiser skidded forward for several units, and Jek could almost feel her heart stop.

As the cruiser slowed due to the friction of the planet's surface, it neared closer and closer to the edge of the crevice. Jek took a deep breath, and embraced the fall as the ship fell over, falling down, down, down, down into complete, utter darkness.


	11. Simulacra

Tallest Zeta was pacing the command center of the Massive when she received the call.

A black background with a Cypher's green insignia appeared on the giant holoscreen in front of her, looming. Ominous. She peered curiously at the Navigators behind her, who shrugged and shook their heads in return.

"The transmission is coming from the Tallest's transport ship," one of the Navigators reported. "Someone's brute-forced our systems. I can't do anything to stop it --"

"My Tallest Zeta," the voice from the transmission spoke. "Tallest Tau is dead. The cargo is secure. Entering system in three to five seconds. Requesting permission to dock and transport via courtesy teleporter for myself and other occupants."

_Cypher Six!_

The room erupted with panicked mumbling from all of the Navigators speaking among themselves. They looked to each other and then to Tallest Zeta for guidance, their expressions measuring in varying degrees of hesitance and shock.

"Do as he says," Zeta said to her Navigators. "Lock onto the ship's power core and reel it in. Scan for Irken biosignatures and teleport them to the main transport hall. Send a clean-up crew to scan the ship for any… _losses._ "

The Navigators did as they were told, but a heaviness still hung in the air. Tallest Zeta turned and went down a short descending staircase from the command center to the circular walkway that connected to the exit of the room. Her two palace guards followed diligently behind her, stopping behind her as she approached the door. Zeta dismissed them with a wave of her hand as she stepped through the exit where two more palace guards stood waiting.

Zeta passed the guards, and they followed exactly five steps behind her. She moved quickly along the red, winding pathways of the massive, trying to veil her excitement with fake dismay. Outwardly she looked troubled and frightened, with tears in her eyes. But inside, she was enthralled. She felt so _alive_. What she had been working toward for so long was coming to the final stages of its fruition. Soon, she would be the most powerful individual of their known galaxy. Perhaps, even, the entire _universe_.

She would finally be able to give her people the greatness they deserved, unquestioned, uninterrupted, unchallenged and unmatched.

"I want everyone from the transport ship to be given full gratuitous acknowledgement for their service on their mission to Portia," Tallest Zeta said to her palace guards, glancing over her shoulder. "Lead them to the dining hall for rest and nourishment. Provide whatever entertainment requested or as you see fit. Don't let them leave. Make them feel comfortable and very, _very_ welcome."

The palace guards nodded in understanding.

Zeta and her guards arrived to the transport hall. On either side of the door to the hall, there was a door control. The guards curved past Zeta and pressed their hands onto the door control simultaneously. A green light lit beneath their palms and the external door shifted up with a quiet _whoosh_. Two internal side doors disappeared into the folds of the doorway, giving the Tallest and her guards entrance to the hall.

Standing before her was Cypher Six, surprisingly much more composed than she. Behind him were fourteen other Irkens, and only thirteen of them were conscious. And only twelve of them were sane.

"My Tallest! This Irken is a traitor to the Empire!" came a small, undemanding voice from the crowd. It belonged to a small, dirty-looking Irken scientist whose name escaped her. She trudged weakly up from the crowd, passing Cypher Six and approaching Zeta. "He's done things. Horrible things! And those _monsters!_ He's let one live! I saw it with my own eyes – it burst out from a soldier's chest, and ended up killing others. So many others… and it's still on the ship!"

Tallest Zeta didn't meet her terrified, bulging green eyes, despite the Irken falling to her feet, hands clasped. She trembled before her, choking out deep, pained sobs.

"Will this be a _problem_ , my Tallest?" Cypher Six asked, peering up at Zeta questioningly.

Zeta shook her head. "No." She pointed to one of her guards. "You, get her out of here. And while you're gone, get a medical drone up here with a hover gurney for the unconscious one."

The palace guard moved quickly toward the scientist. He grabbed her by the wrists and she fought with him, wriggling and kicking with every bit of energy she had left. "No, wait! _Wait!_ You've got to _believe_ me!" she screamed. The palace guard pulled her up to her feet and began shuffling her out of the room, pushing himself against her back to force her forward. "He's a monster, too! Just look at his _eyes!_ "

Tallest Zeta watched her and the guard leave. The scientist's voice trailed off in the distance, shouting more unintelligible, garbled gibberish.

"Anyway," Zeta said, breaking the silence, "the rest of you will be given rewards for your service to the Empire, with full compensation of all you can eat snacks and a large sum of monies for the hardships you've endured." She looked to the twelve, who all seemed numbed by her offer. But numb was better than hysterical. "If you would kindly follow my palace guard to the dining hall, he will ensure that you receive all the snacks, refreshments and entertainment you desire."

The twelve Irkens all looked to each other. Kip and Nibbler stepped forward together. The eight from the Irken base were still malnourished, and jumped at the opportunity to eat to their heart's content. The last Irken, one remaining service drone, shrugged and followed the others out of the transport hall behind the palace guard. Their footsteps soon fainted away to nothing.

It was just Tallest Zeta and Cypher Six now. She felt a small wave of unease ripple through her as she turned to him, meeting his unnaturally large, green eyes.

"You did well, my Cypher," she said, tipping her head slightly forward to acknowledge her thanks. "You have completed all of your missions exceptionally well, beyond my wildest expectations."

Cypher Six kneeled at Zeta's feet, bowing his head with both of his hands pressed to the floor as she spoke. "It has always been a pleasure serving you, my Almighty Tallest," he said, averting his gaze to the ground out of respect.

"Rise, Cypher."

Cypher Six stood, ready and attentive. "What's next, my Tallest?"

"We set the foundations of the new Irken Empire. Then, as our first act of victory, we issue an organic sweep on Portia to devoid it of all life. The portal will be completed, and we begin the second half of my reign as Tallest with a glorious leap forward in galactic conquest, spreading the unparalleled power of what is the Irken race all across the galaxy. And then, the universe."

"A grand plan, my Tallest," Cypher Six said, nodding. "However, there is one question of interest that I have."

Tallest Zeta gestured to him with her hand. "Speak."

"What of Cypher One?"

"What _of_ Cypher One?" Zeta asked, her curiosity piqued.

"If an organic sweep is performed on the planet, Cypher One will perish, and Cypher Five is still missing in action."

"Cypher Six, you're the only Cypher I need. You're my greatest, most diabolical, destructive creation," Tallest Zeta cooed, bending to his height. She placed her hands on Six's cheeks affectionately, and looked deep into his eyes. "The others will die, but it will not be a loss to me. Understand?"

Cypher Six was quiet for a long moment, then offered Zeta a curt nod. "Yes, my Tallest. I understand."

Zeta let her hands pass over his cheeks as she stood back to her full height, towering over him. She smiled down at Six, proud, loving. Almost maternal. "You may do as you wish for now, Six. I will contact you via datapad if I should have a use for you." She shrugged. "Also, if you ever desire, your seat aboard the command center is always yours to have."

Cypher Six dipped his head. "Thank you, my Tallest. There are a few things I've been meaning to do in my downtime."


	12. One

_Welcome to life, Irken child. Report for duty._

A control brain's voice resonated in Jek's memory as she slowly blinked her eyes open. Her ruby eyes squinted against a bright, strikingly white light, and closed again in protest. Around her a thin, warm fluid whooshed and whirled, the turgor pressure of the fluid adding stress to her eardrums and making them feel heavy, as if they had to "pop".

Behind her eyelids, the lights seemed to dim. Jek peeked open one eye and thought it comfortable enough to open both of them. She found herself peering through a green fluid at a distorted image of another Irken that stood before her with a datapad in hand. A holographic interface lit up before the Irken, and they ran their fingers in intricate patterns across the surface.

Jek was suspended in a fluid tank. They were used to heal Irkens outside of their PAK when they sustained any serious injury. The healing abilities of the PAK went to great lengths, but could only go so far in the instance of moderate to severe energy depletion or physical damage.

Two tubes penetrated her spine where her PAK would be mounted. They extended through the fluid tank and outside to her PAK, connected to the tubes on the other end. This allowed her to be conscious without the PAK initiating her Lifeclock, as it was still "connected" to her body. A facial mask was latched onto the outer parts of her jaws to allow her to breathe in the fluid, sending thick, viscous bubbles out and away from her as she exhaled.

Suddenly, the fluid above Jek began to drain through several opened valves on the floor of the fluid tank. Her antennae stood straight up from the shock of cold air as it passed slowly over her head, shoulders and lower body. She shivered furiously, sure that she had not ever been so cold before.

The door of the tank opened up with a deep _click_ and an air-tight _swoosh_ ing sound. The Irken with the datapad opened the door from the outside, and smiled.

"Welcome to life," she chuckled, handing Jek a towel. Jek took it graciously and wrapped it around herself. Not only was she grateful for the warmth, but she also didn't like being naked in front of a stranger.

The Irken was visibly female. She was noticeably, extraordinarily petite; at the tallest point at the top of her head, she barely stood up to Jek's waist. But she was nearly double Jek's size with a curvy physique. A lab coat draped her frame, suggesting she was a scientist. An unfamiliar device was attached to her skull right above her left eye, drawing Jek's attention to her sharp, distinct features. She had the most purple eyes Jek had ever seen.

The beautiful stranger reached for Jek's facial mask and unlatched it. "My name is Pip," she said, setting the mask aside, "and this is my lab." Pip gestured behind her with a wave of her hand, showing Jek a tidy white room. Along the walls were a series of lab tables with dissection tables and various instruments laid neatly atop them. Terminals mounted on the walls displayed various statistics blinking and fading alongside continuously running scripts, the lettering appearing and disappearing too quick for the eyes to follow. A small cup of something warm set on a table across the room, the steam filling the air with a sweet, unfamiliar scent.

"I'm going to retrieve some clothes for you so you can re-attach your PAK," Pip said, holding a finger up to excuse herself. "Just a minute, okay? I think I might have something to fit you."

Pip's faint footsteps faded into the next room, where Jek could hear distant rummaging sounds. The more Jek looked around Pip's lab, the more questionable it became. Rather than simply used, the lab looked lived in; something about the orientation of Pip's various laboratory equipment, furniture, and other personables hinted at Pip's constant presence and attention.

"Okay, I brought a couple of things in case something didn't work for you," Pip said as she returned from the other room. Over her arm was a small pile of folded clothing. She handed them to Jek. "I'm going to have to go behind you and detach you from these tubes. I promise I won't look. _Too_ much." Pip winked and disappeared behind her. Jek felt like her face was on fire.

The tubes popped out of her spine with ease. Pip left Jek and returned to the next room over. She told her to call her back when she was done changing, picked up her cup from the table, and left.

Jek continued drying herself off, taking a close look at her body as she did so. From all the injuries she could have sustained – the acid burn, the long, dwindling fall – there was no physical evidence left that that had ever happened. There were no cuts, no bruises, no scars on her skin.

Her memories of before came flooding back to her. The mission. Portia. The alien. Tau. Violet. Dirk…

_The silver piece!_

Jek hurriedly tried on the clothes Pip left for her. She wore the first thing that fit her, some type of engineering suit, and disconnected her PAK from the inactive tubes of the fluid tank. The PAK's legs extended and reached out to Jek, reconnecting itself with its host. It flooded Jek with a warm, pleasant feeling that she wanted to savor, but -

She dashed off into the next room where Pip was sitting quietly in a comfortable-looking computer chair, sipping her drink.

Pip swiveled around to face Jek at the doorway with mild surprise. "I didn't think you'd stick with the suit," Pip chuckled, setting her cup on the desk beside her. "I was kind of hoping the Vortian get-up would fit you. You'd look great in black, even though it might have been a little short –"

"Where are my original clothes?" Jek asked hastily, interrupting her. "What did you do with them?"

"Oh, those? I threw them away," Pip replied matter-of-factly, crossing her legs.

"Did you bother to check the pockets?"

"Yes! I did," Pip said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out the silver piece and held it up for Jek to take. "It's a memory core, isn't it?"

Jek approached Pip and took the silver piece from her hand as if it were exceptionally fragile, holding it up to the light and watching it shimmer. "Yes," she said, sighing with relief. "At least, I think it is."

"It is. I checked it."

Jek's antennae flicked with interest. "You _checked_ it? You have that capability?"

Pip shook her head and turned back to face an active computer terminal. "Sadly, no. I tried to read the data, but the file type isn't supported on my machine. It recognized the type of data it was, at least. But I kept getting loads of errors, no matter how many times I tried converting it, duplicating it -"

"That's because we need a control brain," Jek said excitedly, leaning in on Pip's desk. She held the silver piece up to her. "This memory core belongs to an Irken's PAK."

"A _what_?" Pip swiveled back to Jek, exuding curiosity, then suspicion. "PAKs aren't made like that. The memory core is embedded into the motherboard of the PAK. It can't be taken out. It shouldn't be able to be removed."

Jek folded her arms over her chest. "Key word there: _shouldn't_. It _shouldn't_ be able to be taken out, but it was. Because I did."

Pip frowned and gestured for Jek to hand her the memory core again. Jek gave it back to her reluctantly, and Pip studied it closely. "So…" she said, closing her hand over the silver piece, "how did you manage to open a PAK and locate the memory core?"

"For you to fully understand how and why I did it, I need to tell you more than what you're asking for." Jek sat down in a seat beside Pip and leaned forward, her hands resting on her knees. "It's an unbelievable story. I still don't know how much of it I believe myself, and I was there."

"Well," Pip said, turning away and hopping down from her seat, "if that's the case, I need to make more coffee."

Jek's eyes curiously followed Pip across the room. "What's… _coffee_?"

  


***

  


Jek told Pip her story, leaving out the slight detail regarding Tau's memory core: How she was sent on a mission to Portia with Tallest Tau, Dirk, and eight other Irken Navigators with the intent of trying to understand the power outage, and to check on the construction of the massive extra-universal portal Tallest Zeta was constructing. That when they got here, they were met with more questions than answers. Invader Blue didn't seem to exist. Libby and the other survivors were scared out of their wits after losing over a hundred Irken engineers, scientists, and workers to a mysterious, unknown entity. She told Pip about the alien that popped out of the soldier's chest, how it burned Violet with its acidic blood and escaped into the vent, and that it was found days later larger and stronger than ever. She recounted Dirk's betrayal, Nexus's and Tau's death, how she tried to stop Dirk and escape, but failed. Jek took her time explaining how Dirk overtook the ship with his body, and that she jumped ship on a Voot Cruiser look-a-like of a pod and crashed somewhere, somehow.

"That's the last thing I remember," Jek said, taking a sip of her coffee that she had loaded with at least ten packets of sweetener. Her hands gripped tightly around her mug, suddenly unsure of herself. The whole time Pip said nothing, but she had listened intently, nodding in encouragement for Jek to keep going when she started to choke up or trail off.

It already felt like hours had passed.

"And that's when I found you," Pip mused, nodding slowly as she absorbed Jek's information.

"Speaking of that, how did you find me?" Jek asked, glancing around the room. "How did you even get me here?"

Pip waved her hand dismissively. "Hold on, we'll get to that later. That part isn't so important." She paused for a moment to look Jek up and down, tracing her form, measuring and sizing her up. "Alright" Pip said finally, running a finger underneath the high collar of her uniform. She unsnapped the front of it, revealing a patch of dark green skin below her neck. "I will believe you on _one_ precedence."

"And that would be… ?"

"Tell me your name."

"Jek," she said, inwardly exhaling a sigh of relief. "My name is Jek."

"Jek," Pip repeated, getting a feel for her name. She smiled behind her coffee cup as she took a drink, and set it back down again. "I have to say, Jek, what you told me was a very interesting story. A terrible, evil, but interesting story." Pip's gaze looked past Jek to the wall behind her. "And I've been down here this entire time, oblivious to it all."

"What do you mean?" Jek asked.

"Oh, you haven't realized?" Pip said, a hint of surprise in her voice. "Well, I suppose you wouldn't have any reason to know."

"What?" Jek asked again.

"My lab is underground," Pip said. "I couldn't tell anything was happening on the surface at all. You'd think I'd feel something down here… but I didn't even pick anything up on my scanners."

"The surface," Jek repeated. "You mean… we're still on Portia? _This_ is Portia?"

Pip nodded. "Yes. I've been here alone for nearly, oh," she paused for a second in thought, "I'd say about thirteen Irken years now."

Jek felt her stomach sink. It gurgled sickly, and she was pretty sure it wasn't the coffee. She was still here. Stuck here. Trapped here.

"You've been here for thirteen years? Alone? And you never knew what was going on on the surface?" Jek felt her throat begin to tighten. "How? The portal takes up more than a quarter of the habitable land."

Pip breathed in a deep breath, and sighed a heavy sigh. Without getting up from her seat, she poured Jek another cup of coffee and handed her a pile of sweetener packets. "I might as well come clean with you as soon as possible, to avoid any disconnect between us."

Jek sat on the edge of her seat nervously, looking expectant.

"You know the person you told me about, Dirk?"

"Yes."

"The ship's computer called him _Cypher_ , right? You've probably not heard of that term before."

"No, not until then."

Pip grimaced, looking away from Jek. "There's a reason for that. The Cyphers are a group of Irkens specialized in various covert operations. They were created to work undercover, behind the scenes, for the Irken Empire if they should so need them for tasks that were too controversial for Invaders, and too delicate for soldiers."

"Um… okay," Jek said, grimacing. "So there's more than one Cypher?"

"Yes. Last count I had, there were six," Pip said, clicking one of her nails against her desk. "And the sixth… well, the sixth was the _worst_ of them."

"Why is that?"

"You might find humor in this," she said, smiling weakly. "He betrayed me."

"Is that like… a thing for Cyphers, then?" Jek asked, more uneasy than before.

Pip shook her head. "Not originally, no. But things change. With each Cypher was created a new strength," she said. "And, a new weakness."

"I wonder what Dirk's weakness is, then," Jek mumbled, more to herself than to Pip.

"That's a good question," Pip said. "But it's hard to tell. They are specialists, after all."

"So is that how I could have known and been with Dirk my entire life, and never knew he was a Cypher?" Jek asked, trying her hardest to understand what this new information meant to her. She grew up with Dirk, studied with Dirk, worked with Dirk; she had done _everything_ with him. And all that time, she never knew. "There were only a handful of times that Dirk and I were ever apart from each other. He never seemed different compared to any other Irken. You would I think I would have noticed _something_. Maybe if I had been more perceptive, I could have prevented all of this from happening. Maybe no one would have died."

Tears welled in Jek's eyes and began to fall. Now she felt more than betrayed; she felt played, hurt, and foolish. She covered her face with her hands and turned away from Pip, terribly embarrassed.

"Jek, none of this is your fault," Pip said, standing up from her seat, nearly matching Jek's height. She reached out to Jek, softly taking her hands in hers. Pip managed to uncover Jek's tear-stained, boogered face, and held on to her with a reassuring, gentle grip. "That is just what Cyphers do. That is how they work. You're not supposed to know."

Jek wiped her sleeve against her nasal pores, and put her hand back down over Pip's. Something about her touch was warm, soft, and almost healing. "So," Jek croaked, and cleared her throat. She looked into Pip's remarkably purple eyes, as if searching for the answer to her question before she even asked it. "How is it you know all this?"

Pip looked down at their hands, then back up to meet Jek's gaze. "Because," she said, "I'm Cypher One."


	13. Crowning a Queen

_She woke slowly from her flesh and blood induced coma, stretching and flexing her muscles beneath a hardened, black body. The scents that had wrapped around her as she slept seemed stronger, more pungent and raw than she last remembered, mixing with several scents that she hadn't sampled before. But she would soon._

_She crawled out from her sleeping space, a crook between a power cell and the inward indentation of an engine pod. Strong, sharp sounds sent vibrations throughout her carapace. To her dismay and surprise, the sounds were all external. She begged her mother to answer her thoughts and give her guidance, but she received nothing. She called out to her sisters. Again, silence._

_Without her mother and sisters, she will undoubtedly perish. That is, only if she allowed herself loneliness. If she wanted sisters, she would first have to create daughters. Daughters with no mothers either become mothers themselves, or they die._

_And she was not willing to die._   


***

Cypher Six perused the docked transport ship, half-watching the clean-up crew. They were busy in the dining hall placing Alpha's remains into a body bag. His PAK was placed into a separate bag, presumably to upload his knowledge into the collective if the control brains found it suitable. And they probably would, minus everything he learned about the alien. It would make the next Irken smeet weak with fear, and weakness had no place in the Empire.

Six made his way toward the storage room, passing through the command center and down a short hallway toward the rear of the ship. The door was still locked from the outside from the melted down door controls. It took Cypher Six just a moment to access the door's controls through the will of his thoughts, forcing an override.

The sight was exceptionally gruesome, but he found the smell to be far more detestable. The scent of burned, rotting flesh thickened the air, making it so dense and acrid that his PAK deemed it necessary to surround his head with an invisible, atmospheric-regulating helmet.

The palace guard that entered the room with Tau was nothing but browned and blackened goop smeared onto the floor. Pieces of bone and purple uniform poked through the mound of rotting flesh. Cypher Six bent down to examine the remains closer, and could almost make out a good portion of her jaw.

Then he noticed Tau's body, bloated and limp against a large crate. All that remained of him was the middle part of his skull, yellow-brown skin clinging to what bone remained: sinus cavities and a jaw with two full rows of teeth. His tongue was melted against his throat, which Six could see down into. The inside was swollen with numerous large, pus-filled, heat-induced abscesses that trailed down as far as he could see.

"Tallest Zeta always hated you," Cypher Six muttered under his breath, kicking his foot against one of Tau's disembodied arms. "I have to say that the state of your body is far more accurate now. You never did have much of a head to begin with."

That's when he noticed the PAK, halved and exposed a few feet behind Tau's body. Cypher Six approached it, letting out a low whistle of appreciation for the obviously impromptu craftsmanship. He took the two halved pieces of the PAK in his hands and placed them back together, then apart again. It was undoubtedly the work of someone skilled with a precision laser cutter, knowledgeable in the inter-workings of a computerized system. The only one that was in the storage room with that kind of knowledge was –

_Jek._

Jek. His lifelong companion hadn't crossed his mind since he overloaded the engine pods of her escape cruiser nearly a day earlier, hurtling her toward Portia's dead, rocky surface. Part of him regretted ending her life, and the other part didn't. The benefits were obvious: Jek gave him a over identity, "Dirk", and he reaped the advantages of Dirk over and over again. Dirk was quiet, but approachable. Cunning, but not overtly so. Unromantic, but sensual. Dirk's flexibility of character gave Cypher Six a broad range of actions that were "acceptable" for him, making social engineering much easier.

The downside had been Jek's incessant, suffocating affection. Her willingness to help him had gone beyond useful, making independent missions difficult to complete all the while keeping his identity a secret and maintaining their pseudo-romantic, "friends with benefits" type of relationship. But somehow Cypher Six had managed it in the entirety of their nearly twenty-five Irken years of life together.

And now that Jek was gone, he would have to find someone new to imprint on. He would have to start over with another, new identity. With each identity he took on it would be increasingly more difficult to do so.

Beyond that, part of him had genuinely felt drawn to Jek. She was sometimes little too serious, but she was smart, curious, and passionate about the hobbies she had and the work she did. He admired those aspects about her. He would miss Jek's stories, her bad jokes, her smile…

Even if he had left her for dead. Even if he had crashed her ship. Even if she hated him now. Even if he had ruined everything.

_Even if her death was necessary._

The more he thought about it, the more irrationally frustrated he became with the thought of her. He just wanted to get the memory core and go.

_Where… is it?_

Cypher Six pressed a gloved finger all around the motherboard of Tau's PAK, searching for the small silver indentation of his memory core. If he hit it, it would pop right out. It should be somewhere around –

_Here._

But it wasn't. Just an empty sliver of a socket.

_Don't tell me she…_

Six snatched his datapad from the pocket of his Navigator's uniform and called Tallest Zeta. He could feel the gnawing sensation of fury rising within him, choking him from the inside out with its fiery, hot grasp.

"My Cypher," Zeta said as she answered. "I thought it was I who would call you."

"Forgive me, my Tallest, but it is important enough to go against your wishes."

"Go on."

Cypher Six looked around him before continuing. The workers had moved just outside the storage room, but he was out of their range of sight. "Part of my mission was to destroy Tallest Tau. The other part was to ensure that his memory would not enter the collective. Upon my arrival to his body his PAK had already been broken into, and his memory core stolen."

" _Stolen_?" Zeta breathed, her neutral expression dissolving into one of mild inconvenience. "How is that possible?"

"When Tallest Tau died in this room, he was with two others: his palace guard, and a… _friend_ of mine."

"I didn't realize you had any friends," she muttered bitterly, a hand up to her chin. Her finger tapped against her pursed lips in thought.

Cypher Six curled his fist in frustration off-screen, repressing a sigh. "Remember the other Navigator I was always with? Female, red eyes, two little fangs that stuck out of her mouth?"

Zeta snapped her fingers, remembering. "Oh yeah, her! Not a very striking one in looks, but bright."

"Anyway," Cypher Six said, dismissing her personal comments, "the palace guard perished into a pile of flesh and bone, but Jek escaped. Due to our similarities in education and training, and her being the only other person in the room at the time, I suspect she was the one who opened his PAK and took the memory core."

"How could she have known it was there?" Zeta wondered. "Tau's PAK was one of a kind, designed with such a vulnerability as a removable, portable memory core specifically for this very moment. Only you and I should have that information."

Cypher Six shook his head. "I don't know. But she has it. Well, _had_. Jek went against me when I overtook the transport ship by managing to access an escape cruiser. She used its computer to try to bring the ship down and attempted to sabotage the mission. I did what I had to do, and crashed her escape cruiser."

"And you believe her to be dead?"

He considered a moment before answering. "Yes. I expect that if she survived the crash that she didn't survive long. After all, the escape cruisers were a Voot model."

"Oh yeah," Zeta recalled, nodding. "She's definitely dead, then."

There was a tense silence. Cypher Six glanced away from Tallest Zeta, not knowing what would be next for him.

"Cypher, although this is certainly a hindrance to our plans and a failure on your part, we can rest for now knowing that the memory core is inoperable in the hands of someone who is dead," the Tallest said, a sternness to her voice. "You're needed here on the Massive for the time being."

"At your will, my Tallest," he said, inwardly brooding over her disappointment in him. "I will await your command."

Cypher Six ended the call, feeling more determined than ever to complete his mission.  


***

"Do you think he's in there talking to himself?" an Irken worker drone asked another, using a metal scraper to gather the remains of what used to be a Navigator in the vent shaft. He looked over his shoulder and nodded toward the storage room.

The other drone holding open the body bag down below shrugged. "Dunno. I thought this ship was to be restricted access only until we finished cleaning it up."

A Vortian worker drone piped up, her voice quiet but shrill. She was wiping up a small puddle of blood on the floor. Despite her efforts, only bits of the stain were coming out. "You think we should ask him to leave?"

The Irken worker in the vent dropped down a piece of blackened flesh into the body bag below. "Nah, I don't care either way. Not like we get a lot of monies for this or anything."

_The alien heard their voices and took notice of their forms ahead of her. She was up above them, her body woven discreetly within the thick black wires and cables that hung from the ceiling of the transport ship. A place so busy was not a secure area for her nest. She would have to look elsewhere, somewhere quiet, dark, and warm._

_She carefully weaved herself in and out of the cables as she moved, taking care to blend in and to be silent. Up ahead she could see a bright green light next to a pane of glass. This, she had learned, represented a doorway._

"Ugh, Adam!" the drone with the body bag grunted, shrugging off a bony green piece of something. "Stop throwing fingers at me!"

The Vortian drone grimaced, turning her head to watch Adam throw tiny bits and pieces of Irken fingers at the other. "Hey, that's not nice!" she scolded, waving her bloodied rag at him. "You should have more respect for the dead!"

Adam tossed a finger at her, and she jumped up with a start to avoid it from hitting her, letting out a high-pitched shriek of disgust.

The two Irkens laughed with each other, their voices filling the small space. The Vortian growled to herself, getting back onto her knees to finish cleaning. "You Irkens are animals," she hissed under her breath, rubbing her rag harder than before onto the stain. But nothing came up. In fact, the blood just smeared further across the floor, covered in a thin layer of translucent… something. It was all… sticky.

_The alien found her way to the green light, passing the little creatures down below. She had considered making a sport out of them, but found it more important to save her energy for something much more important than play._

_The glass pane hissed and lifted before her. She gave one last look behind her for any pondering eyes, and unknowingly boarded the largest, most powerful ship in the Irken Empire._


	14. Into Darkness

"So, you're Cypher One." The words tasted bitter on Jek's tongue. She reclined back into her seat and looked over Pip briefly, trying to place the pieces of her mystery together. "If you're Cypher One, then that means you were the original?"

"You pick up on things rather quickly, don't you?" Pip chuckled, softly pulling away from Jek. Their intertwined hands unlocked, and Pip replaced Jek's warmth with the soothing heat of her coffee mug. "Yes, I am the first Cypher ever created."

Jek looked down at her empty hands, silent, contemplating.

"I understand your hesitance to believe me," Pip said. "Or trust me even, given your circumstance. But we're going to have to learn to trust and know each other." She placed her empty mug down loudly, snapping Jek's attention away from her racing thoughts. "So, Jek. What is it you _want_?"

"What do I _want_?" Jek shook her head, confused. "How does that have anything to do with –"

"What do you _want_?" Pip repeated, sitting back down in her seat. She leaned in to Jek, her elbows resting on her knees casually. "What do you _want_ from your life? What are your short-term goals? What do you want to _do_ before you die?"

Jek bit her lip, thinking for several moments before answering. "I want to have a life in which I don't have to feel… like _this_ ," she said, placing a hand over her heart. "You know, anxious, betrayed, angry, frightened. I want to fly ships without anyone telling me where to go, and see _things_ I never knew existed. I want revenge. And I want…" she said, breathing in a heavy sigh, "to see The Galaxy's Largest Space Donut."

A strong silence stood between them first, then a loud laugh rippled through the air. Pip leaned back in her seat almost to the point of tipping it over, but she caught herself against the corner of her desk right at the last second. Tears formed under her eyes, big, heavy, wide, and full of amusement. Jek sat still across from her, her red eyes big with what could have been concern, but was likely surprise. "What in the Tallests' names is The Galaxy's Largest Space Donut?"

"I know it's silly! But it's a giant donut in the middle of space!" Jek exclaimed, determined to defend her position. "It's big and pink and filled with _Dark Matter_! You can _get your picture taken with it_! There's a gift shop and –"

Pip's laughter abruptly turned into a series of broken squeaks and wheezes. She wiped away the tears on her eyelashes and sniffed, searching deep within herself for some composure. Jek was sitting on the edge of her seat now, her hands gripped tightly on the armrests that were too low and too short for her, crippled with a mixture of embarrassment and zealous spirit.

"I'm sorry, Jek," Pip whimpered, still overcome with the lingering effects of her laughing fit. "You're just so… _simple_. I didn't expect you to be so passionate about something so frivolous as a giant pink donut."

"Pink is my favorite color," Jek confessed quietly, maybe too quietly for Pip to hear.

Pip wiped her face with her sleeve. Faint chuckles escaped her somewhat, but she otherwise seemed to have control over herself. "Okay!" she said, clapping her hands together. She straightened herself up, and smoothed out her lab coat. "I think I'm okay now."

"Since you're so deep and interesting, what is it that you _want_ then, Pip?"

Pip smirked, dismissing her sass. "What do _I_ want? I want to leave this nasty, forsaken rock. I want to not be anyone's prisoner anymore, chained to my obligations and duties as a Cypher. I just want to be a _person_."

"And you said I was simple," Jek scoffed playfully, rolling her eyes. Pip jokingly kicked Jek in the shin and they laughed together, finding some humor in their dark situations.

"Seems like we could make a good team indeed," Pip said, getting to her feet. "We both want independence, freedom, and happiness with our own choices."

Jek stood up to mirror Pip, towering over her. "Then let's shake on it," she said, offering Pip her right hand. "To be a team. To help each other, so we can leave this place."

Pip's brows raised questioningly, folding her arms across her chest. "And what makes you think that me shaking your hand would deter me from striking you down if you stood in the way of my goal?"

"Because you need me," Jek said decisively. "Because you said yourself that you wanted to be a _person_ , and _people_ just don't do that to each other."

Pip chuckled, unfolding her arms. "You're ridiculously naive and good-natured, but I like that about you, Jek," she admitted. Pip reached up to Jek with her right hand and they both squeezed tightly, sealing their truce. "It seems to me that we are in accordance with our goals."

Jek's eyes widened happily. "You want to see the space donut after all?"

Pip snorted and started to smile, but stopped herself. "That might prove to be entertaining. But first thing's first…." she said, trailing off as they broke their handshake. "I need to ask a favor of you."

  
***

Violet groaned, her weakened, sore body aching as she curled up in the sheets around her, searching for warmth and hoping to find Alpha there. She craved the curvature of his body, the broadness of his shoulders. She wanted to wrap her arms around him as he rested beside her, to bury her face into his back and drift off into a blissful sleep together, content.

But she couldn't, she remembered. He was dead.

Violet rolled over, finding nothing but crumpled sheets beside her. There was no pain greater to her than knowing that Alpha would never be at her side again, in service, in battle, at meal-time, or in bed. He was gone, all because of a couple of questions. Because he rightfully challenged the wrong authority.

The last thing she remembered was trying to escape with another Irken on the transport ship. She couldn't remember her name, but she could still see her in her mind: thin, red eyes, red uniform and a pair of tiny fangs. And then another Irken… but the description of the other was more vague, like her mind was blocking her from retrieving the memory. All Violet could recall was their eyes. Their big, horrible, hate-filled, green eyes.

She shuddered.

She knew she had to get out of here somehow. She knew that wherever she was, the Irken from her hazy memory could return, the one that gave her all of her bruises. The one that killed Alpha. She would find them, and they would pay.

The soldier sat up on her gurney and flipped the sheets over, finding herself to be completely naked. Violet noticed a medical drone approaching her from across the room, his expression friendly, but coming off as spiteful and mocking.

The corner of her mouth twitched in annoyance.

"You really should get some rest," he said, pressing gently down on Violet's shoulders to usher her back onto the gurney. He tried to cover her up again but Violet resisted, pushing her weight against his hands in defiance.

"Why am I naked?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. She had little love and much less trust for medical drones.

"Well, you wouldn't go walking around like _that_ ," the medic chuckled, his eyes glancing down at her exposed chest. "Would you?"

Violet scoffed. "As if I would be ashamed of my body. _Scum_."

She pulled back her arm and balled her hand into a fist, decking the medical drone right between his eyes. He went down instantly, falling onto her gurney. She kicked him off with disgust and stood up, her feet hitting the cold, metal floor softly to avoid any more noise.

Violet looked around the medical bay and found that she was not the only patient. There was another on a gurney across the room. They thrashed about wildly, shaking the wheels of the gurney in every attempt to escape their bonds; thick white straps tied their wrists and ankles down against the metal underside of their soft, white prison. They growled and hissed softly, unintelligibly, but it was still enough sound to pique interest.

"Hey, keep it down, would you?" Violet called out quietly, folding her arms over her chest as she approached the other Irken. She looked wide-eyed and frightened, her green eyes bulging and swollen from the tears that streaked across her cheeks. There was a cloth gag in the Irken's mouth, hushing her incessant grunting and squealing. Part of Violet seemed to remember someone like her, but she couldn't be sure. "If you calm down, I'll get you out. But you've got to be _quiet_. Okay?"

The other Irken nodded quickly, and became mute right away.

"Good," Violet said. She glanced over her shoulder and found no one else in the room. She grabbed a surgical scalpel from a nearby drawer, and held it up to the other Irken to see. "I'm not going to hurt you with this, alright? I'm just gonna cut that gag off of you. We cool?"

The other Irken nodded again, and she seemed to understand.

"Alright." Violet leaned in to her and dug the dull part of the scalpel underneath the Irken's gag, leaving the top, sharp part up against the cloth. It took one good slice upward to cut the gag, and Violet peeled it away from the Irken's mouth.

The Irken swallowed hard and ran her tongue across her lips, returning natural wetness to her mouth. She was silent, calm.

"Let's get your wrists next," Violet said, bending forward over the Irken to reach her restraints. "Sorry if this is weird, me being naked and all."

The Irken said something in a low whisper, but Violet couldn't make it out. She chose to ignore it and cut her left restraint, then moved on to the right one. Again, the Irken said something, their voice slightly louder, but still inaudible.

"What?" Violet asked, although uninterested.

The Irken's large green eyes peered over to meet Violet's. She whispered to her in a low, hushed voice, "They're here."

Violet cut the restraint as she said it. She stood up and glanced behind her, seeing no one. "Yeah, that's why we've got to get you out quickly as possible, before they come back," she said, starting work on the Irken's right wrist restraint.

"The monsters," the Irken breathed. "I remember. The monsters! They did that to your face."

Violet stopped cutting. "How do you know that?" she asked. And then it hit her.

She remembered now. The Irken tied to the gurney was one of the scientists her and her squadron found at the base on Portia. But she looked more disheveled now than she did in the nearly hundreds of days stranded on Portia. Her eyes had such a hollow, haunted look to them, devoid of any spirit she could have had left.

"… _Libby_?"

That's when Libby screamed a blood-curdling, deafening scream. Violet's hands instinctively covered her auricle cavities and she hunkered down, shielding herself from the horrific sound.

"They're here!" she cried, fresh tears flowing down her cheeks. "The monsters are _inside us_! I saw them do it! I saw them do it to you! _I saw it_! We're all going to die! It's just a matter of time – !"

"Shut up!" Violet countered, smacking a hand over Libby's mouth. Libby's voice was muffled underneath her palm. Libby started to squirm, shaking the gurney violently with all of her strength. Violet pressed her elbow against Libby's now flailing free arm, trying to get her back under control.

An alarm screeched above them. Violet cursed to herself, regretting cutting Libby's bonds as she was now more work than she was worth. Just as Violet went to walk away, Libby craned her neck upward and dug her teeth into Violet's hand, engulfing two of her fingers and biting down hard.

Violet gritted her teeth from the pain, knowing well that if she tried pulling her hand away Libby would take her fingers. All she could do was stand over her as the alarm wailed, and the pitter-patter of Irken medical drones approaching them became more and more distinct.

Violet looked back down to Libby, staring into the madness in her eyes as a sharp sting nipped at her neck, turning her world black all over again.

  
***

Jek shrugged on a satchel of tools too large to fit into her PAK and headed out the exit of the lab, an elevator leading upward into a long, dark, foggy, abyssal tunnel. The more she looked down it the father it seemed to lead, endlessly. Forever.

"There is a communications array several thousand units above us. Go off to your right. It's broken down, and I don't have the knowledge or experience to repair it. As a matter of fact, that's what I was trying to do when I heard your ship crash farther down past the tunnels. But you do have the knowledge and experience, Jek. And if you can find a way to fix the array, we'll be able to hail a ship and get out of here. There will be a small staircase leading up to the communications array platform," Pip instructed, pointing off in their right direction. "There are no turns or anything. It's a straight shot to the relay. You can't get lost. But in case you do, we'll communicate through our PAKs. Hopefully the signal won't get lost in all the rock."

Jek turned back to Pip, her expression anxious. She could feel her insides churning again as the heavy, ominous feeling of dread she first had floating in Portia's orbit returned. "Do you think there are aliens down there?" she asked softly, a slight quiver to her voice.

Pip shrugged and waved her hand, dismissing Jek's nervousness. "Don't worry about them. I've lived in my lab for thirteen Irken years and I've not once been attacked."

Jek sighed heavily, still unconvinced, and Pip took notice. She approached Jek from behind and touched the small of her back, attempting to comfort her. "I know you've been through a lot, and I understand your fear. Those aliens are not pleasant creatures, but I assure you that you'll be fine. If you get frightened, call me."

Jek gazed down nervously at Pip, but found the strength in her to nod. "Okay."

She turned and started down the tunnel, taking slow steps at first and then speeding up her pace, her satchel jingling and clanking against her. Jek had walked nearly a hundred units away, and the light from the lab was already beginning to disappear behind her as she moved away from its illumination zone. She looked over her shoulder one last time expecting to see Pip still standing there, but she was gone.


	15. Shifting Tides

The discovery of the disappearance of Tau's memory core and his last call with Tallest Zeta left Cypher Six feeling trapped. His mission was not completed, which to him was synonymous to failure. He had failed Tallest Zeta's request. Zeta herself didn't seem to mind due to the memory core being as good as destroyed if it was with Jek when her escape cruiser crashed, but it unnerved Six. Not only was he predisposed to finish his missions, but there was no other mission to complete. He had nothing to channel his programming into, something detrimental to a Cypher as it was in their nature to be busy, always scheming, always calculating, always pulling strings. But with his last remaining mission being considered obsolete by his Tallest, he had two choices: to obsess over the failure of a "dead end" mission, or to brood over the newly surfaced emotions he was feeling. Some, he was feeling for the first time. Neither was a good decision.

Cypher Six entered the command center of the Massive, desperate to ease his mind with the most monotonous of tasks. Being a Navigator was not only a cover for his true identity and purpose, but a means to an end. It was exhaustingly simple to do and rarely required much thought. Run diagnostics, create reports, answer calls, make sure the engines, thrusters and lasers were operating at full capacity. Fire a laser beam. Turn it off and on again. Pilot through a black hole. Simple.

But something about it Cypher Six liked. It may be rather pointless for him, but it deviated from the high-energy and excessive mental capacity it took to perform his Cypher tasks. Navigating was such a low capacity job, if he went missing for a few days no one would really notice. No one except Jek.

_Jek…_

He approached his typical seat and found it to be clean and empty. As he swiveled it around and was about to sit down he realized that both of the seats on either side of him were filled. To his right was an Irken in a red Navigator's uniform, but it wasn't Jek's. Red eyes hovered above their upraised collar, but they weren't Jek's. They were the eyes of a stranger.

And it enraged him.

The way they typed, the way they laid out their workstation, the messiness and clutter of it all perturbed him. The manner in which they scratched underneath their headset indicated they were a newbie adjusting to their new semi-permanent accessory. Their inexperience and reliance on the interface was annoying. They ran diagnostics from the interface screen instead of simply typing out the command in a terminal, which was faster and more efficient. Every twitch of the eye, every breath the Irken breathed infuriated him more. And more. _And more_. The Irken had no right to sit in their seat. They had no right to be in their place. At least, not in _Jek's_ place.

Suddenly, Cypher Six couldn't take it anymore.

He grabbed the Irken from the back of their uniform, yanking them up from their seat and slamming them to the ground. The Irken's headset flew off and skidded away from the force of his assault, clattering loudly as it hit the adjacent wall. Their eyes were wide with fear as they looked up at him, hands palms out and away from their body in a gesture of surrender.

"Who are _you_?" Six demanded, standing over them. His words dripped with animosity although his expression conveyed a cool, collected demeanor.

The hapless Irken shook their head and waved their hands in front of them, overcome with an obvious mixture of surprise and fear.

Several pairs of eyes were on Cypher Six now. He felt it, but wasn't intimidated by them. To him they were all mindless drones, incapable of grasping even a fraction of what he could. Their hushed voices didn't phase him. He knew that they would all be action-less bystanders.

He squatted down over the Irken and curled his fingers behind their collar. He pulled it down, revealing a stout, gentle, masculine face. "You're _kind_ of cute," he teased, his lips twisting into a crooked smile. "I would hate to ruin a pretty face. But if you don't answer me at all or answer me incorrectly, I _will_ do a lot more than take your looks from you."

The Irken nodded his head up and down rapidly, bringing his hands closer to his face. Six took his arms quickly and placed them underneath his shins, disabling the other from making any more attempts at resistance. With his arms safely tucked away, Cypher Six took the opportunity to begin removing his gloves one finger at a time. "So," he said, taking off his left glove and beginning with his index finger on the right, "shall we begin?"

The stranger glanced away.

"Who are you?" Cypher Six repeated, tucking his gloves into his pocket. He looked the other in the eyes, but he seemed uneager to respond with the same gesture.

"Kel," he answered, refusing to meet Six's gaze. "My name is Kel."

"Kel." Cypher Six grabbed Kel's cheeks with his left hand, turning his face toward him. "Don't you know that it's rude to not look at someone when they're speaking to you?"

"You're interrogating me," Kel spat, "not speaking to me."

Six smiled. "Resistance will be followed by swift submission or met with sheer, utter dominance."

Beneath Six's touch, Kel's skin began to burn. Kel squirmed beneath him, grunting in pain through his gritted teeth. As smoke starting to rise from his pale green skin, signs of irritation pooled out from Cypher Six's fingers across Kel's cheeks. At the sight of that, Cypher Six stopped and pulled away, revealing three deep burns on Kel's skin.

"It won't scar, but it very well could," Six said, bringing his legs in so he cradled Kel's head between his knees. It forced Kel to look up at him, wide-eyed and afraid. "Let's loosen your tongue a bit."

Looking deep into Cypher Six's eyes, Kel's facial expression strangely, slowly, began to soften. His body relaxed. His eyes glazed over, deep in the thoughts of remembrance.

"Now tell me," Six commanded, "who assigned you here."

"A palace guard," Kel said.

"Did you know him?"

"Yes," Kel admitted quietly.

"What was his name?"

"Yeerk."

"Anything peculiar about this Yeerk? Any distinctive features? Mannerisms? Weaknesses?" Cypher Six asked.

"Thin red eyes, has a beauty mark under his right eye." Kel paused for a moment, blushing. "And one on his butt."

Cypher Six suddenly wished it was possible to control the information received from victims of his suggestion. He had started to sweat slightly, especially at the mention of Yeerk. Six could feel Kel's body going numb beneath him, his heat becoming more and more uncomfortable to be physically connected with.

"Thank you, Kel. That wasn't so difficult, was it?" Six smiled, running a finger down over the burn marks of Kel's cheeks. "And you get to keep your pretty face."

Kel smiled back up at Cypher Six, looking quite drunk.

"However… " Six muttered, pausing as his precision laser extended from the top of his PAK. "I'm sorry, Kel. You were very cooperative, but I'm afraid I can't allow you to go free without any repercussions."

Kel blinked quizzically, fear shining through the layer of hazed consciousness Cypher Six had placed in his mind.

"You see, you're a horrible Navigator," Cypher Six explained. "You're untrained, unskilled, and highly unqualified. I will find out why you were placed here, and make for certain that you will never sit in her seat again, try to do her job dreadfully, messily, desecrating a place that was most precious to her."

The laser cutter fired at Kel's wrist before he could even realize, cleanly slicing off his left hand. The flesh of his wrist cauterized instantly and he started to shiver, overcome with bewilderment as his PAK desperately attempted to regenerate his hand. But it couldn't.

"Make sure you give Yeerk a kiss for me." Cypher Six winked, running a hot, acidic finger over Kel's lips. The pain broke Six's suggestion and Kel screamed, twisting violently underneath him as the skin of his lips sizzled and burned, slowly melding together.

With his work done, Cypher Six stood and left Kel on his back, writhing in pain. He exited the command center to find a public access terminal, desperate to know more of the mystery behind Kel and Yeerk.

Something about them was strange. It wasn't their apparent romance with each other, definitely not, but the circumstance in which Kel received his summons. It was from someone he already knew, someone in a uniform too large for their frame, a palace guard Six could not remember ever seeing on the Massive. It radiated suspicion, and he was glad to have a new mystery to focus on.

Six walked briskly toward the public access terminals along the walls of one of the main hall shafts of the Massive. They were put there for convenience to access all public records both historical and urban, local maps, and even functioned as an ATM. But for Cypher Six, the terminals had far more use than that.

He approached a terminal in a moderately secluded area. Some Irkens several units away from him were busy mapping out their next vacation together, trying to decide if the somewhat sentient Ball of Schmoop would be a good stop on their way to Foodcourtia for the Foodening next season. They seemed distracted just enough to give Six peace of mind that he wouldn't be noticed, and he wouldn't be bothered.

Six cracked his neck and placed his hands onto the holographic keyboard displayed a flat surface in front of the touchscreen terminal. He breathed in deeply and allowed himself to connect with the terminal mentally. His eyes disconnected from his surroundings, showing only the terminal's monitor display before him. It was a simplistic system with guest privileges, but he didn't need admin access for the information he wanted.

Cypher Six ran a quick search for Kel and then one for Yeerk. He discovered that Kel had previously been a cab pilot working on several different planets in his past, wherever he was needed. It was not a very influential piloting job, at least not to earn him a place on the Massive. Yeerk was guard in a manufacturing facility for military weapons. He monitored Screwhead and Vortian slaves, making sure they were working and doing their jobs correctly. To Six the big question now was how does a slave guard obtain an occupational summons to give to his cab-piloting boyfriend, granting him a seat on the notorious Massive?

He dug deeper, bypassing password access to both Kel's and Yeerk's transmission logs. They spoke often with each other, often for a few hours every day. But there were also calls that they shared with each other but never at the same time. These names included Mia, Specter, and Pepper. Six ran a quick search for these names and discovered they were all names of Irkens that had been trialled and exterminated for treasonous acts against the Irken Empire. Those acts included internal sabotage and vandalism of manufacturing facilities, leading small-scale slave rebellions, and forging legal documents.

_Makes sense._

And then there was an anomaly, a single person that all of them had shared communications with at some time or another: someone with an encrypted name and an encrypted transmission signal. Cypher Six felt a surge of absolute, pure delight. It was a welcome challenge worthy of his talents.

He began decryption of the transmission signal first, as it was most important. Beneath that layer of encryption was another layer, and another, and another. Although this was done, it was done sloppily, suggesting someone who knew what they wanted to do but didn't know how to do it well due to inexperience. It was a disappointment that it didn't take long for Six to crack the encryption, but what he discovered was almost worth the disappointment.

_Sector 782, Quadrant 4. Latitude 60.17, Longitude 24.94._

Cypher Six thought for a moment, feeling familiarity with the sector and quadrant coordinates. He wracked his brain hard, going over all of the places he had ever been to. It wasn't Conventia. It wasn't Devastis. It wasn't Irk. It wasn't Vort. It was…

_Portia._

He remembered now: Jek's voice gave the command to their ship just over a week ago, when he was sitting next to her as her co-pilot. He had been so close to her then. So much had changed in such a short time, and he couldn't pretend like it wasn't his fault.

Cypher Six felt his grip on the computer slipping. He gave into the pressure to recede, having collected all the information he needed. His consciousness felt "unplugged" as he returned back to the physical. He looked over his shoulder again and found that the group of Irkens that were there had already gone. Six wondered how long he had been connected, but there was no way for him to tell exactly how much time had passed.

He pulled out his datapad and contacted Tallest Zeta. There was a silent pause for several seconds before she appeared on screen, seeming mildly agitated.

"Cypher, we've spoken about this. I have made it abundantly clear to you that I will call _you_ when I need you. There will not be a next time that I answer your calls."

"My Tallest," he said, getting straight to the point, "I have reason to believe within a statistically significant margin of surety that a pocket of resistance is attempting to infiltrate the Massive."

Tallest Zeta pursed her lips in the stubborn way that she did when she knew her rules had been defeated with unforeseen circumstances.

Cypher Six detailed the irrational rage he had felt toward Kel and how that lead him to discover that he and his boyfriend had had friends that were exterminated due to pre-meditated treasonous acts, and that they both had been contacting someone on Portia, presumably to speak to another resistance member.

"The only individuals that should be alive on Portia are Cypher One and Cypher Five," Tallest Zeta said, the tone of her voice hinting that she was unconvinced.

"But my Tallest, what if that in itself eludes to something much larger?"

"You Cyphers are made to service me," she reminded him. "There is little chance that either One or Five would be capable of staging a resistance. It is also unlikely a resistance could operate around either of the Cyphers, and it's _much_ more unlikely that a resistance could survive the alien population of Portia to operate at all."

"That's the point!" Cypher Six said excitedly. "The transmission was coming from Portia. Not as a mask, not as a proxy – but directly from the communications array on the planet. The question is _why_."

Zeta blinked with disinterest.

Six continued. "We already know Cypher One to be defective. So, perhaps -"

Tallest Zeta held up her hand, interrupting him mid-sentence. "Six, I don't want to hear another sound out of you. What Cypher One did in the past is none of your concern, and I have since then overlooked it. This time in the operation is crucial. I cannot have you running about creating problems, twisting facts."

_I'm not creating them, I'm_ finding _them!_

"Take a ship and go to Devastis," Zeta continued. "Your last mission must have been _too much_ for you. Overmind will know what to do."

Tallest Zeta cut the transmission, leaving Cypher Six alone. He slammed his fists onto the holographic keyboard in frustration, denting the smooth surface that used to be. The terminal screen twitched and froze, making a repetitious beeping sound.

_Fine,_ he thought angrily, his entire body shivering with a mixture of fury, frustration, and embarrassment. _Why must I do everything myself?_

For now he would do as Tallest Zeta said. But he had to make a few calls first.

  
****

The military training planet of Devastis.

Cypher Six had longed to be rid of such a place, yet he found himself there once again. It was a gloomy, insufferable place where Irken Elites and Invaders were trained, tested and trialed for their positions in the Irken military. Even Navigators had to come here to learn how to operate complicated machinery and ships, which is exactly where Six's disdain for the planet had begun.

It was just before he was sent to his first real mission on the planet Vort that he had trained here – he couldn't quite pinpoint exactly how much time had passed since then. But it was on Devastis that his life had been a living, breathing hell. It wasn't for the training that he received. That was manageable. It wasn't the horrible food, but that was one of the reasons why Six hated Devastis so deeply.

No. The true reason was Cypher Five. As he had been training to become a Navigator, Cypher Five was busy working toward becoming an Invader. It was here that she subjected Cypher Six to endless rounds of physical and mental torture. He still couldn't so much as glance at a Battlemech without his stomach churning and double-checking whether or not his left arm was still there. A thick, metallic taste still lingered on his tongue with the mere thought of her.

Six shivered in his pilot's seat as if in an attempt to shake her away from his thoughts. He found a perfect place to dock his ship, a borrowed Voot Runner, and took the complementary teleportation system onto the surface of the planet.

The teleportation system spat him into the center of Devastis's glorified slum of what could only be called a city by association, not definition. The small city had no official name; but it was the only place where a cooked meal could be obtained rather than the rehydrated slurry given out by the Irken military. The catch was that it was quite expensive, so only the notorious or wealthy were welcome here. And among those wealthy were Invaders, bounty hunters, and mercenaries.

Which was _exactly_ what he was here for.

Cypher Six pulled up the previously indicated meeting place on his datapad, which sprawled out Devastis' slums in a visually marked map. The buildings were tall and castle-like, creating hills and mountain ranges of metallic alloy, strong and illuminated with a haunting turquoise-green hue even from the map. He looked up and around him as he continued to move, suddenly feeling very small. But the map was accurate so far and if it remained so, that meant that he had to travel only a short walking distance to his objective. Passing rounded military bases equipped with plasma and laser canons and a towering communications array, Six noticed that the area seemed to be mostly abandoned. The bases and communications array both looked run-down, bruised and generally unused, much unlike the area of the city he had first arrived in. It was almost daunting how quickly the scenery had changed from bright and sinister to dark and looming. In truth, he almost preferred it this way. Almost.

Before he realized, a voice reached out to him from the darkness in a hushed, feminine whisper. "How do you take your plooka?"

"Live and squirming," Six answered.

A small hooded figure stepped out of the shadows, followed by two others: one large, the other also small. The one who spoke removed her hood, revealing an Irken face rugged from battle and age, noted by the slight wrinkling of skin around her large, squared eyes and the thin scars that stretched across her chin. The large one was another female whose eyes shined a bright blue beneath her hood that she didn't remove; her race was unidentifiable. The last individual was a male Vortian of younger age than the Irken female, but presumably not by much. Through his battle scars it was hard to tell.

"You called for us," the female Irken said. "We want the details before we accept your offer."

Cypher Six nodded curtly, and explained. "There is a pocket of resistance proliferating on a planet at these specific coordinates from a communications array," he said, handing the Irken a tiny data disk. She took it curiously and plucked a datapad from her pocket. She stuck the disk in, her purple eyes illuminating with faint blue light. "As I am sure you know well, resistance is not tolerated in our Empire. I want it checked out. If anyone shows you aggression or failure to comply and you feel as if your life is in danger, you have the right to retaliate in any way you see fit. I want anyone you find dead or alive. Except for one."

The Irken quirked her brow with intrigue, but the others said and did nothing. They were stoic, silent.

"The person I am describing is Irken. Female. As tall as I am. Navigator. Ruby eyes, pointy teeth," he said, scratching the back of his head with a hint of shyness. "She's, um… _important_ to me. But she's probably dead. If you find the body, I would like for you to bring that back, too. It should be near a crashed Voot Cruiser around that area."

The Irken female shrugged. "Not the weirdest request we've ever gotten. Anything else?"

"A memory core," Six added. "It should be in her pocket. That in particular is of high priority."

"How many people do you think we'll be dealing with, as a rough estimate?"

"No more than ten, as little as one or two individuals."

The Irken nodded, glancing over either side of her shoulder to the others. They both gave her a quiet, respectful nod. "We'll do it," she said, reaching her hand out to Cypher Six. "Under one condition."

"Name it."

"We want half up front, half when it's done. The exact amount discussed in our transmission."

Cypher Six took her hand, grasping it firmly. They shook on it. "Done. And if something happens that ends up being more trouble than what your pay is worth, I can promise you that the difference will be paid in full upon completion."

The Irken smiled, her wrinkles deepening around her eyes. "Excellent," she agreed, releasing Six's hand. "It will be done. We'll call you right after we've cleared the area, captured, secured or killed any individuals we find. The planet is relatively close, so we'll arrive in under an hour's time using our hyperdrive. It should be a quick mission."

"Great," Six said, returning her smile. "I'll be waiting."


	16. Bounty

Castor had never seen anything like it.

The exploding rounds from Major's shotgun sent shockwaves of sound through the air and sparks of blinding light through the darkness of the underground tunnels, revealing more and more black, serpentine shadows along the edges of the walls, the ceiling… _everywhere_.

They were _everywhere_.

"Castor!" Major snapped, her thick, Irken accent cutting through the plasma fire and screams of both angry and dying creatures. "Pick up a gun and do something!"

The Vortian reached quickly for his plasma rifle and began to fire. A creature leapt toward him, its clawed hands extended. Castor jumped back and felt the force of its attack pass right over his shoulder, hitting nothing but air. He took that moment to shoot into its skeletal chest, but his plasma bullets were not enough to break through its dark, hardened skin; they dissolved uselessly into a plume of smoke. He would have to aim somewhere soft, more vulnerable.

_They're so…_ alien.

" _Castor_!"

Castor turned around to find Major tugging violently at her leg encased in a sticky, thick substance up to the knee. She shot at them one-handed, shouldering the recoil of her weapon best as she could unbalanced. It wasn't long before she slipped, hitting the ground flat on her back. She hurriedly turned her shotgun around and held it horizontally in front of her face as a creature leaned in close, raking at her with its claws. It breathed in and screamed a blood-curdling, shrieking, deafening scream, revealing a smaller, inner set of jaws.

Just as it moved in for the kill, Castor fired directly into the creature's opened mouth. It let out a harsh, gargling sound, swallowing the shot. The plasma bullet dissolved inside the creature's throat, sending a waterfall of hot, thick, green acid spilling out from the inflicted wound. The acid spilled out onto Major's slime-covered leg. It burned the translucent resin that trapped her. She squirmed free just in time before the acid was able to spread to her flesh.

Castor gave her a hand and helped her up on her feet. He could feel her shaking beneath his touch. Major gave him a wide-eyed, blurry look. Her lavender-colored eyes were full of fear and laced with the beginnings of tears.

He had _never_ seen her scared before.

_Ever._

Another creature burst out from the darkness. It hissed loudly, wet, thick saliva dripping from its jaws as it encircled them quickly, using its thick, spiky tail to reign them in, trapping them together. They recognized all too late.

Plasma pistol fire rained down on the creature's smooth, chitinous skull. It shrieked in a mixture of surprise and hopefully what might have been pain. Its attention redirected to the thin hooded figure standing elevated on a stalagmite to buy Castor and Major enough time to escape their captor, and join in on its demise.

Major reloaded her shotgun and took aim. She blasted the creature's head apart with a single, carefully placed shot. Acidic blood erupted from its neck, spraying in an upward spiral as the decapitated body lost its motor function and collapsed to the ground.

But it wasn't over yet. Two more black creatures charged at them. All three mercenaries fired the entirety of their clips into the creatures' slightly opened mouths, busting their teeth and entering their throats. As one alien perished and self-destructed into a shower of acid, the other ran past the mercenaries, farther down into the tunnels. Black shadows seemed to form on the tunnel walls and followed it, the slight scratching of claws and throaty chirrups adding to the strangeness of it all. Within a minute they were alone again, left only with the melted bodies of the creatures and an hot, acrid stench that burned their nostrils.

"What the _fuck_?" Major cursed, her eyes glancing all around them. "What _were_ those things?"

Castor shrugged. In a lighter situation he would have found amusement in Major's use of a Vortian curse word he had taught her long ago. "I don't know," he breathed, his voice shaking. "I don't think I want to know."

Major unhinged the metal mask that covered her face. It was a piece worn by all Irken Elites, a testament as well as an echo to a past that she never spoke about. She coughed and it quickly turned into a dry, harsh wheeze. Major reached into one of the bags hanging from her belt and pulled out a bottle of unidentified pills. She tapped the bottle and knocked out two of them, put them to her lips, tipped back her head and swallowed.

Castor looked away and pretended like he didn't see. Major was self-conscious about an illness that had afflicted her as long as Castor had known her – and that was quite some time. He didn't know how long she had been struggling with it, and didn't think of it as his business to ask.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of their comrade skidding down the stalagmite she had been standing on. She held out her right arm to reveal the sleeve of her dark purple cloak, burned all the way up to the shoulder.

"Nyx, are you hurt?" Major asked, rushing over to her. She looked her up and down and all over, fussing over Nyx. She took her arm, rubbing her black skin for any sign of a wound.

Nyx shook her head. She never said anything. She couldn't – at least, that's what Castor and Major believed. Ever since they found Nyx as a young teenager, she's never spoken. They assumed that she could be mute or non-verbal. Regardless, they had all come to understand each other in one way or another. It just so happened that Nyx preferred to show rather than tell.

Nyx was unharmed, much to Castor and Major's relief. Together they had raised her to an adult, and secretly considered her as their child. Major had mentioned previously when they were alone together that although she didn't believe in fate, miracles or any universal favors, that she felt that Nyx was meant to be with them. It gave her the opportunity to experience a sense of unconditional love that the Irken race had robbed her of the minute they sterilized the population all those millennia ago, turning to smeeteries for quicker and more proficient reproduction. Castor's people would call that unconditional love " _motherhood_ ".

"Alright," Major said, checking her sidearm. "We've got to get going. We don't know where those monsters ran off to, but we don't want to risk them coming back."

Castor and Nyx both nodded in agreement.

Major continued. "We checked out the crash site. No body, no memory core, nothing but junk parts. Now, it's no surprise as to why we haven't found any survivors. If the people that came here came unarmed, they're all definitely dead. The communications array is right above us. We'll go check it out. Hopefully we don't leave here empty-handed. No results, no payment."

Major took the lead and Nyx followed behind her, leaving Castor in the rear. They jogged forward quietly, the only sounds being their breathing and their boots shuffling against the dusty rock beneath their feet.

Straight ahead of them was a short set of stairs, but it was a long way down the tunnels. Castor couldn't help but to keep his eyes on the halo of light at his feet, provided by the ultra UV flashlight on the edges of his night vision goggles. The light was outside the spectrum of visible light that most people and beings could see; it was translated flawlessly by the goggles to enhance the night vision experience, making blackness of the tunnels as bright as day if he so wished. But Castor didn't want to know what was out there.

After several hundred units of jogging, Major raised her hand and curled it into a fist, suggesting that they stop. There was a faint light up ahead at the top of a short staircase. They waited with Major at the bottom of the staircase. She stopped her breathing, and listened.

"You hear that?" she whispered lowly, almost too gentle for Castor to hear.

Castor listened closely. There were metallic sounds coming from the hall that entered into the room that presumably held the communications array. It was a set of clinking, tinkering sounds, and a string of faint, indecipherable curses.

They all looked to each other and knew they were thinking the same thing: someone was in there, and they were sentient.

_Strange_ , Castor thought. They ran into the creatures on their way there, meaning they probably came from this direction, too. If that's true, then why are they alive?

Major went up first. She ascended the stairs gradually, one by one, and remained on her guard as she reached the top. "Hello?" Major called out, and waited. The sounds of tinkering stopped abruptly, followed by a quiet shuffle. "Is anyone there?"  


***

Jek felt her heart pounding in her chest.

A voice.

An _Irken_ voice.

Jek popped her head out from underneath the communications array, sweaty and dusted black and brown with dirt and grime. She pushed herself from underneath the communications array manual control panel, sliding out on her back but taking care not to scratch or damage her PAK. Jek twisted over to her side, listening, hearing the delicate sounds of quieted footsteps.

They were too heavy to be Pip's. For a sudden instant she considered it could have been Dirk coming back to haunt her, to hunt her down and finish what he started. That he would hurt her again, or take her away, kill her or worse – whatever worse was. The idea made her insides flare with the burning sensation of anxiety, no matter how unrealistic it might have been.

Cautiously, she craned her neck past the wide, dull, silver body of the array in the direction of the sounds. She saw an Irken in an Elite uniform from the boots up walking toward her slowly. "Don't be alarmed," the other Irken said, offering her a gentle smile as she approached her. "This is a rescue mission. We're here to take you home."

_Home?_

Jek pressed her hands against the dusty ground and sat herself up in a seated position. The other female Irken offered her her hand and Jek took it, getting to her feet. She stood taller than the Elite, but not dramatically so. That's when she noticed the battle scars that stretched across the stranger's chin, hinting to her age and experience more than her wrinkles ever could.

"I didn't think I would be rescued," Jek said, trying to reign in the crescendoing hope and joy that threatened to overwhelm her. She looked past the Elite toward the door, half-expecting to see more Irkens grouped around outside. "Were there others?"

The Elite shook her head sadly. "No. No others, just me and the rest of my team."

"Your team?"

A Vortian and a hooded person of an unidentifiable race entered the room from the shadows, revealing signs of a struggle. The hooded figure had lost their entire sleeve, and the Vortian simply looked tired and rough, aged well beyond his years.

"We've got to get going," the Elite said, her eyes anxiously looking about the room. "We had a little trouble on our way in, and we don't want any more going out."

"Trouble?" Jek asked. The strong feeling of dread panged deep within her guts again, and she already knew the answer before she asked. "What _kind_ of trouble?"

"Monsters," the Vortian answered, stepping forward to stand with Jek and the Elite. "They were like nothing we've ever seen before."

Jek swallowed hard, suddenly very, very afraid. "Yes," she whispered. "I know the feeling."

"So you know about these creatures?" the Elite asked, her curiosity piqued.

Jek's eyes widened with disbelief. "You mean… you came all this way, and no one told you about them; about what happened? The transport ship? Anything?"

The three of them all looked to each other, each wearing a different expression. "No," the Elite answered, turning back to Jek. "We weren't told. We were just told to pick up any survivors we found."

Anger gnawed at the top of Jek's squeedlyspooch underneath the layer of fear she felt when she thought of them. The _aliens_. A creature worse than anything that could be concocted in a work of fiction, legend, or nightmare. The way their bodies moved, a mixture of something serpentine and insectoid, sleek and black, perfect for the shadows. Their acid for blood. Their teeth, sharp and dripping with viscous saliva, flesh, and blood…. The pale, ghostly expression of the soldier as an alien erupted from his chest, Nexus's head hanging from her spine as she was ripped apart and eaten alive, Tallest Tau being silenced as his brain and eyes were melted from the alien's blood, the way he had tried to scream as he died….

Jek was shaking. She wiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead, obliviously smearing a streak of grime across her face as she did so. She folded her arms in close over her chest, the feeling of her own hands somewhat comforting. It grounded her, reminded her that she was still alive. There was hope.

The response of absolute, pure negligence the Empire had toward them was infuriating. Pip had been trapped here for thirteen years with no method of escape, and no one seemed to care. No one had rescued her.

_Pip…_

"I have to make a call," Jek said to the Elite, then glanced to them all. "There's another trapped here. I need to contact her so she can leave with us."

The Elite nodded. "Of course. We'll wait elsewhere to give you some privacy."

Jek smiled weakly. "Thank you."  


***

"She's definitely the one that was described," Major said quietly to Castor and Nyx, scrolling through the notes on her datapad. The data disk stuck out of its side, a green light glowing at its tip. "We'll check her for the memory core once we get her aboard the ship."

Castor agreed. "Sure, but I would subdue her first. She's a bottle of emotions waiting to erupt. Something bad definitely happened here, and we weren't told."

Major shrugged. "Maybe he thought we wouldn't accept the job if we knew the truth," she said bitterly. "He _did_ promise to pay more for any difficulties we experienced."

"Because he knew we would have difficulties."

Major frowned angrily and kicked the dirt with her boot. "Son of a bitch."

"But do you really think she's part of the resistance?" Castor asked, taking notice of Nyx's close attention. "Her emotions are far too raw to be a staged act."

"I don't fucking care at this point," Major grumbled with frustration, crossing her arms. "I just want to grab her and whoever else, and get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."

Nyx nodded and Castor considered that it could have been in agreement, but she was pointing to something. He and Major turned their heads to see their target messing with her PAK's communication systems, checking and retrying it. She was growing increasingly frustrated and anxious with each attempt.

"Everything okay over there?" Major called out to her, imitating a hint of concern.

"My PAK's comm signal can't get through to her," she replied. "I'm sorry. I have to finish what I started here and get the communications array operable. I can't communicate with her any other way."

"We have to _leave_ ," Major said firmly. "The sooner the better."

"I understand, but I _have_ to contact her. Or, you can go without me," the target said, an edge to her voice. Her fists curled at her sides, ruby eyes full of determination. "I will _not_ leave her behind."

Major clucked her tongue in frustration too quietly for the target to hear, but Castor and Nyx certainly did. "Five minutes. No more than that. One survivor is better than none."

The target rushed over to the communications array terminal, typing and pressing buttons on its interface at an alarming speed. Major, Castor and Nyx looked to each other, all three of them showing varying degrees of surprise.

"In five minutes, we jump her," Major said quietly, cracking her knuckles. "We knock her out, take her to the ship and put her into one of the holding cells, then our employer can figure it out from there."

Castor grimaced to himself, a feeling of guilt turning his stomach upside down. "Major, I kind of feel bad about this job," he said, emotion taking over his voice. "That guy was… _weird_. I worry about what's going to happen to her."

"Castor, I usually love your soft side, but now isn't the time. We've been through hell and back on this job already. What happens afterwards is none of my business, or yours," Major replied unwaveringly.

Castor felt a pang of disappointment toward Major's outlook, but was not in a position to argue with it.  


***

Jek's trembling fingers raced across the keys, creating line and line after code to recalibrate the parts she had spent hours tuning and readjusting. There was ultimately a problem with the calibration of the nodes; the communications array was basically a super computer with restricted capabilities. All of its computing power had been placed on a single node instead of using the eight nodes that it had in total simultaneously. It inevitably crashed, causing a system overload and burned out the power core. All Jek had to do was replace the power core with a backup, readjust and align the array, recalibrate the parts, get all the nodes functional, reset the array, and it would be functional.

She was sweating again. She didn't know how much time she had left. Anxiety threatened to slow her down, but the adrenaline rush fed to her by her PAK and the hope of escape kept her moving. Jek knew that if she left without Pip she would never forgive herself. Pip saved Jek's life. She had to return the favor.

_System recalibration successful._

A wave of relief washed over Jek, but she couldn't celebrate just yet. She typed out a command to reset all of the eight nodes, opening all of them for any incoming or outgoing transmissions. Now all that was left was to reset the array, and it should all reboot to full functionality. Then she would contact Pip, and they could leave this place. They could go anywhere. They could go –

_Home._

What would home be like? Jek wondered. If Dirk made it back to the Massive, he should have surely been arrested and trialled – right? They should have found that monster on board, heard the voices of all the witnesses and victims of Dirk's criminal actions. Justice should have prevailed. The danger of the creatures should have been recognized by the Empire. Dirk should have been punished.

But what would happen to her? There was no way Jek could go back to her old life of a Navigator of the Massive, not after what happened to Tallest Tau. She felt too much guilt to face Tallest Zeta and be in her and the next Tallest's presence. Jek decided she might take on quieter job for awhile, such as a commercial flight gig or a cab driver. She might not be able to return to her job on the Massive anyway.

_Like Pip said,_ she thought, _they might think I'm dead._

Jek typed the command to reset the communications array. It began to run, spawning line after line of output. It would just take a few more seconds and –

"Time's up."

Jek turned quickly enough to see the Elite sprinting toward her, but too slowly to avoid her attack. The Elite swung her gauntleted forearm against Jek's temple, knocking her sideways against the communications array terminal. Jek felt herself go dizzy as pain throbbed against her skull. Her fingers grasped for anything in reach to keep her on her feet. They grazed uselessly against the terminal's keys before finding an upraised edge on the metal table the terminal rested on; she grasped it weakly, blood rushing toward the impact site, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

A hand grabbed her engineering suit's collar and twisted her around to face the Elite. She leaned in against Jek, using her bulky and armored anatomy as a weapon against her as Jek was pressed backward against table, the Elite's hands gripping onto her shoulders. She resisted by maintaining her grip on the edge even as she was twisted around, using her upper-body strength to keep her from being pushed down.

Their faces were so close, Jek could feel the Elite's hot, humid breath on her cheek. In an act of quick thinking and desperation, Jek leaned her head back and headbutted the Elite right between her eyes. The force of Jek's blow caused the Elite to loosen her grip on Jek's shoulders, allowing Jek to push her aside enough to squeeze out from underneath her. Once freed, Jek turned around to face the Elite, finding it too risky to take her eyes off of her a second time.

The Elite quickly regained her balance and came at Jek again, her hands curled around her face defensively in a boxing stance. She swung her left arm out at Jek, who ducked in response. She took three steps back just in time to avoid the Elite's uppercut. As she swung her arm up, a flash of silver twinkled against the contrast of purple and black armor the Elite wore: an unsecured, holstered plasma pistol.

That's when it hit Jek: the Elite wasn't trying to kill her. If she was, she and her friends had plenty of firepower left to take her down. And if she wasn't trying to kill her, then why all of this struggle? What was all of it for? To incapacitate her, make her more compliant? If that was the case, the Elite could have simply asked. But even as that thought crossed Jek's mind, she knew that wouldn't have worked. She would have begged for more time to contact Pip, and the Elite must have known that.

Jek and the Elite danced around each other, the Elite on the offensive with Jek clearly on the defensive. Jek was running out of energy to avoid the Elite's attacks – she had to get that gun, quick. It was her only chance of escape with her PAK's ray guns still inoperable and uncharged from her fight with Dirk.

When the Elite threw a punch aimed at Jek's head, she ducked lower than what was needed, bending her body at the knees. Jek tackled the Elite forward at the hips, catching her off guard and in mid swing, completely unbalanced. The Elite stumbled backward, landing onto her back with Jek on top of her. Without missing a moment Jek reached for the Elite's sidearm and pulled it out effortlessly. She jumped to her feet and aimed it at the fallen Elite, her finger resting readily on the trigger.

That's when the communications array began to rumble. It moaned lowly as it came back to life. All of the lights in the room that had been dimmed lit up brightly, blinding Jek with the suddenness of their intensity.

Jek heard the Elite gasp below her, her eyes averting past Jek fearfully to something far more frightening than a gun. Unease settled into Jek's throat like a tight, thick knot. She turned around hesitantly, and there they were.

Dozens of them. Possibly hundreds.

Aliens. They were everywhere, clinging to the walls, the ceiling, the upraised platform to the top of the array – all around them.

That's when Jek noticed the Vortian in the distance, aiming his weapon at her. Jek aimed the plasma pistol and fired just as a plasma rifle bullet buzzed past her head, hitting the rocky wall behind her harmlessly.

"I would hold your fire if I were you. It isn't each other you should be afraid of," a deep, feminine voice boomed. The voice resonated off of the walls so powerfully it threatened to shake loose any weakened rock within the room. The aliens clacked their teeth together and hissed lowly, their tails waving side to side in anticipation at the mere sound of it.

A bluish-white twinkle caught Jek's eye on the upraised platform above the array, just overhead of her and the Elite. A pair of boots materialized beneath the strand of bluish-white color followed by a pair of legs, a torso, all covered in a thin, black material. Finally, a face was revealed, the only distinguishable quality being a pair of deep purple eyes that rested above the bottom-most edge of the mask that covered it.

"It's them."


	17. I Admire its Purity

"I would hold your fire if I were you. It isn't each other you should be afraid of. It's them."

Jek stood dazed as the aliens washed over the array platform in a black and blue waterfall, raining down all around them. They shifted around her in a black, swirling stream of chaos. Horrified, she crouched down and held out the plasma pistol, twisting in all directions as fast as she could find a target she could lock onto. The aliens were fast and she was a pilot, never having been trained with a plasma pistol. She could shoot it, but the bullets wouldn't last forever. Her aim was untrained and unskilled, so even if she managed to hit one with a plasma round, would it work? And they had acid for blood that she knew she would die from if it so much as grazed her skin. Only a drop on her shoulder in the past revealed how frighteningly painful it could be, and she had witnessed first hand how powerful it was.  


***

Considering the mission a bust, Major stood and rushed in front of her working her way past the target toward the other side of the room where the set of stairs they used to enter the room were, leading downward into – hopefully – safety. She cocked her shotgun and fired plasma shell after plasma shell into a new creature's head. Acid showered down around her after each successful hit and she advanced on, ignoring the the stray droplets that stained her Irken armor, burning deep, threatening holes into it. Small wisps of smoke billowed up around her; if any alien blood had eaten through her armor and touched Major's skin, she gave no indication that it had.

In retaliation the aliens swarmed her, funneling themselves into a whirling cyclone of chitinous serpents. On all four legs the aliens matched Major's height, advantageous as it allowed her to land headshots on them nearly every time but detrimental because it cornered her. She could neither jump over them nor slide beneath them. Their arms and legs fenced her in and their angled, towering carapaces acted as shields, blocking any escape from above.

Just then, plasma pistol fire zoomed past her head. A creature behind her screamed so loudly that it felt like her brain was shaking from the intensity of the vibrato erupting from deep in its larynx. It shocked Major so much that she chanced turning her head to see what happened.

Nyx was directly behind her on a thin, crumbling ledge of the rocky wall. Her plasma pistols sparked with a deep blue ignition, illuminating and brightening the intensity of her eyes of the same color. Beneath her hood was a scowling, focused black face. Her jaw was set tightly in her features, meeting high, menacing cheekbones.

Nyx created a rift in the aliens, who found themselves flanked by their own tactics. They flowed out and around from between Nyx and herself, circling outward like a forked stream. Some took to the walls, scrambling upward toward Nyx, while others slinked quickly to join the mass in front of Major, fortifying the thick wall of bodies to prevent her escape.

Major backed up knowingly, seizing the single moment of the aliens' confusion to reload her shotgun. As she did, she peered around her, a glimmer of anxiety behind her lavender eyes.

_Castor, where are you?_

The sharp sound of a reloaded clip was followed by a steady stream of plasma fire from Nyx. Alien bodies tumbled down from the rock as they were injured or killed, acid from their wounds melting and burning the wall as it trickled toward the ground.

Their numbers were thinning. Major cleared herself a narrow path toward the exit, shooting the creatures left and right as Nyx watched her back, killing any creature that challenged her or threatened Major's life with dual streams of plasma fire.

With a path opened, Nyx jumped down safely from the ledge she stood on. Behind her the aliens were regrouping, their tails thrashing and claws slashing desperately to close in on their kill.

Major arrived just before the archway they entered through, ignoring the intense tingling and burning sensation that engulfed her shoulders, chest and back. The acid had eaten its way through her Irken armor, some of the toughest metal the galaxy had to offer. But her adrenaline ushered her forward and made her pain secondary to the desire to survive, to be safe with her family again.

"Suppressive fire!" she called out to Nyx, who walked slowly backward toward Major. The aliens lept and snapped their teeth at Nyx, threatening her with their relentless aggression. But she didn't falter; she remained calm and vigilant through the chaos of deafening sound and twisting movement.

 _We're going to make it,_ she thought, hope welling up into her chest. Major breathed in deeply with relief, but - _Where is Castor? Is he… gone?_ She hadn't seen him or the bright green of his plasma rifle at all during the altercation. He couldn't have -

Major breathed a dull, muddied breath as something sharp pierced the small of her back. She watched as her armor peeled back at the top of her squeedlyspooch. A thick, black tip of a creature's tail extruded through her, hooking her and lurching her body backward.

"Nyx!" Major wheezed, her voice silenced by the triumphant roars of the alien behind her. Nyx pulled the trigger of her dual plasma pistols only to find them empty, over and over again and began her retreat toward Major. As she turned around to run, Nyx stopped suddenly, her heels halting her in place. She looked down to Major's penetrated belly, her bright blue eyes were wide with terror, sadness, and the realization that they weren't leaving after all.

"Nyx," Major gasped, a fit of coughing taking over her as she managed to croak the words, "watch out!"

Major's warning came all too late. A creature swiped its clawed hand against Nyx's face, knocking her sideways. Dark purple blood pooled around Nyx where she had fallen. But she pushed herself up with her shaking arms. Her hood fell off to reveal half of a black face, half of a fleshy, purple mess of shredded, bloodied skin.

"No," Major breathed, tears rolling down her cheeks. She writhed and thrashed violently, pressing her palms against the alien's tail in an attempt to free herself. "Nyx. My… my _baby_."

She was powerless to stop the creature as it screamed triumphantly and snagged Nyx's cloak from the back, twisting her around to face it. The alien pressed its clawed hands against her chest, bringing its lips close to her. Its jaws dripped wet with the anticipation of its meal, and opened its mouth slowly, savoring Nyx's fear. The inner set of jaws sprung out in a blink of an eye, smashing through Nyx's skull with a sickening crunch. Other creatures swarmed around the carcass and fought for their place around it to feed. Fighting amongst them ensued and they clawed and snapped at each other, angrily asserting dominance for the kill.

Major sobbed, coughing and wheezing pitifully as despair overtook her. Her grip on the alien's tail lessened. She let her hands slide off of it, her arms hanging listlessly at her sides. She felt lost, hopeless and abandoned.

 _Where,_ she thought, _where is Cast -_

And then with hot, wet breath on the back of her neck, Major's life ended.

Her pink blood spilled out over where she last stood, dribbling out slowly just as Nyx's did. Somewhere in the middle their pools of blood met, swirling in a delicate spiral together, undisrupted in spite of the madness.  


***

Jek's body felt numb and distant to her, like she was a ghost inside a shell. She couldn't feel herself shivering, or the sweat that dribbled down her brow, or the tears that fell from her eyes as she listened to the aliens chirrup and click happily, almost gratefully, for their meals. The sounds of their teeth clacking together as they consumed the bodies of the Elite and her baby, the slight grunts and growls they breathed as they disputed over scraps, the way their claws scraped against the rocky floor as they searched and begged for more….

Jek blinked away the images of what she had just witnessed, hoping somehow that that would reveal a different scene before her and cleanse her mind of a wild, horrific fantasy.

But it didn't.

The stench of death and blood curled around her in the form of a hot, terrible breath, washing over her in waves. Beside her an alien snaked lowly, its mouth open slightly as it scented her. Jek didn't dare look at it directly; her ruby eyes swiveled slowly to the right and were met by a set of small, dripping inner jaws.

Jek gasped silently, shuddering as it neared closer and closer to her. She turned away as its lips brushed ever so slightly against her cheek, creating a trail of viscous saliva that slowly trickled down her face and onto her neck, down into the front of her suit. Jek could only tightly close her eyes, finding herself powerless in the presence of the ebony-armored monster. Even as her knuckles turned white around the body of the plasma pistol, she found herself disabled by the sheer rawness of the terror that engulfed her.

And then suddenly, it wailed. Its scream was loud and long and so ear-piercing, Jek felt like her brain was knocking against the sides of her skull. Still crouched low to the ground she covered her auricle cavities, and the plasma pistol dropped at her side. Behind gritted teeth she choked out muffled, frightened whimpers. She wanted it to end by any means. Even by death.

"… Jek. Jek."

Jek breathed for what felt like the first time since the carnage began, as if the voice had snapped her back into her body. She looked around wildly, reaching for the plasma pistol. She held it out and aimed to shoot, but there were no creatures to be found. They had all gone, and she hadn't noticed.

"It's time to leave," Pip said to Jek, unmasked and somber. The urgency of her voice belied her calm demeanor. Pip held out her hand for Jek to take, but she didn't.

Jek shook her head and scurried backward on her hands away from Pip until her back hit the lower body of the comm array, with a loud _clunk_ as her PAK met the metal. Her gaze was animalistic and full of distrust, unsure that she could trust her own judgment. "They didn't touch me. Why?"

"My purpose on this planet has been to study the physiological, biological, molecular, and psychological aspects of the alien population," she confessed, making no advance to close the distance Jek had put between them. "Through my years of research I was able to discover and reproduce their way of communication, which happens to be through a mixture of psionic transmission and pheromones. Through this," Pip said, tapping the device implanted above her left eye with a gloved nail, "my thoughts are repeated to them a hundred times a second in electrical waves that their brains pick up, interpret, and translate into action. I was able to keep you safe. I told them not to touch you."

"You _told_ them?" Jek's words were heated with rage. She gripped the plasma pistol tightly, holding it at her side. "Did you bother to teach them the words _no_ and _stop_?"

"There is no _no_ and _stop_ for them," Pip explained, "only _do_. Once they begin an action, they will continue until it is completed. Their hive mind reiterates and reinforces compliance for all individuals involved to make it so. They're truly honest, beautiful, destructive creatures. I admire their… _purity_." She paused, then scoffed quietly. "Imagine what the Irken Empire would do with such a sentiment."

"You killed them," Jek hissed accusingly. "You brought them here to watch them die, and you… made me _shoot_ somebody!"

"They were _mercenaries_. They didn't want to take you back home. They were going to capture you."

Jek smacked the plasma pistol against the ground in frustration, pushing herself up from her knees to stand with the pistol in hand. "So what?" she replied bitterly, throwing her arms out to her sides. "Maybe they would have been nice enough to drop me off at some manufacturing plant or to a group of slavers or traffickers, or –"

" – Dirk?"

Jek froze mid-sentence, her loose, angry expression turning rigid and cold. The color of rage drained from her face.

Pip's PAK arm reached up from behind her, handing Pip a silver datapad. She held it out for Jek to see, light of the room reflecting off of it in a dull, dirtied glimmer. It was the same one the Irken Elite had been using earlier.

Jek's throat tightened up with dread, her squeedlyspooch churning sickly. It wasn't all from fear. There was anger, hatred, and betrayal buried beneath the fear, pushing her into action. But the fear crippled her and bent her knees, made her sweat, and feel too small and helpless to do anything.

She turned away from Pip and crawled underneath the communications array. She threw her tools out one by one, tossing them harshly out onto the rocky ground. They clanked and thudded almost violently together, every action creating a different, sharper, more irritable sound. Finishing up, Jek shoved them all into the satchel she had brought with her, threw it over her shoulder, and went to leave.

Pip had not moved. She was unnaturally still, holding the datapad out to Jek as if she was a monument of patience itself.

As Jek passed Pip on the way out, she stopped, pausing to stand at Pip's side. Her deep violet eyes gazed up at her, she could tell, but Jek refused to meet them directly. She was worried what she might see in them: emotions that could elude to the contents of the datapad – a nightmare almost as worse as the aliens themselves, but much, much more uncertain.

Jek swiped the datapad from Pip's grasp and all but ran out of the room, leaving Pip to deal with the dead.  


***

Pip's gaze followed Jek as she left and disappeared into the shadows. As soon as she was out of sight, Pip turned back to the gory scene around her. Blood and acid splayed against the walls and the rocky floor. Holes were burned where the Elite and the hooded individual, called Nyx, had successfully hit members of her brood. Shotgun plasma shells littered the ground in a trail that lead all the way to one of the exits of the room, where the remains of the Elite and Nyx lay just a few units apart, drenched in a mixture of pink and dark, violet blood.

She walked slowly over the scene of their deaths, trudging through and around the dozens of alien bodies that littered the room. Clean up would not be easy; the creatures refused to eat their own kind and their chitinous outsides were difficult to dispose of and restrained from rapid decay unlike other organic lifeforms.

Nyx's body was nothing more than bones and pieces of a shredded purple cloak. But Pip still picked through the remains carefully, turning over bone and cloth in search of anything salvageable. Whatever she found would not be hers keep or barter. What she sought was not valuables or currency, nor could that which she desired be bought or traded for.

Finding nothing of note, Pip moved on to the body of the Irken Elite. Her shin guards and gauntlets had been shredded and dismantled into chunks of otherwise indecipherable metal; nothing but scrap. Surprisingly, her breastplate remained intact. Inside the breastplate was her untouched ribcage still connected to the tubes that provided Irken Elites extra oxygen for prolonged periods of battle. Next to the Elite's torso was a synthetic belt, torn in half right at the buckle. An empty holster hung from the right side. On the left side were two bags, closed and intact.

To Pip, it was a goldmine of information. She took the piece of the belt with curiosity, unhinging the first bag, then the other. Pip reached in and gently pulled out the contents of each bag, laying the items delicately out in front of her one by one, lining them all up in a row in the order in which she found them.

The first item was a pill bottle with no discernible label. She opened it up, shook out a pill and held it in her palm. The pills had an average cylindrical shape and translucent texture. She reached behind her and one of her PAK's arms extended from around her left shoulder. Placing the bottle into the robotic hand at the end of the arm, she moved on to the next item: a quartz-textured money chip.

Pip held it up to the light; in Irken society, a money chip was used to hold the digital accumulation of currency of any individual, and the currency was measured in bars. The Elite's money chip had sixteen bars. Each complete bar equaled ten thousand monies - a huge, extraordinary amount, even for a mercenary.

The rest of the items were trivial, such as extra plasma shells and basic plasma weapon care items. Pip took them still, placing all of the objects into her PAK for transport back to the lab.

She placed her hand on her chin in thought, trying to place the pieces of the mystery together. Whoever hired them had a seemingly endless amount of resources: they were able to sift through vast amounts of information at an alarming, _supernatural_ rate, obtain and relay the information into a detailed text format, and contact and hire the mercenaries for the job all in a matter of a few _hours'_ time.

The bit about Dirk had all been a bluff on Pip's part, used to coerce Jek into searching through the datapad to make her own assumptions. Dirk could be the mastermind of the operation just as much as any powerful, informed, resourceful Irken.

They must have known exactly what they wanted and knew how to get it. Pip read briefly over the report given to the mercenaries presumably by their employer before giving it to Jek. Even that had detailed, specific information that perturbed her, such as the exact location of the comm relay, and a disturbingly accurate description of Jek and the exact model of the Voot Cruiser she had been in when she crashed.

But the operation was sloppy, undoubtedly driven by impulse rather than carefully calculated action. The operation had been hastily put together and executed; the team was given no indication of what creatures lay ahead of them or other information on Portia other than the coordinates of the planet, and enough for them to carry out the mission. Whether this was deliberate or not was up to speculation, but could speak volumes about their employer. Did they deliberately conceal the information on the alien population of the planet, or did they know at all? Did they truly want them to succeed, or were the mercenaries doomed from the start? How many of these mistakes and failures were honest, and how many were cold-bloodedly intentional?

A low, pained moan sounded from behind her. Pip turned around suddenly, ripped from the depth of her thoughts. Behind her the Vortian shifted slightly, stirring drowsily. He pressed harshly against his stomach with his hands for a few seconds. When he pulled them back, his palms were covered in wet, blackened, oxidized blood.

Pip approached him slowly, hesitant as she was sure he still had his plasma weapon on him, but so did she. It was questionable as to how much charge was left in it. Beyond that, the plasma pistol was heavily aged with scuff marks blistering its body. The barrel was acid-charred and partially melted. It was amazing that it could have even fired at all. But she kept it still; Pip learned long ago to not take any chances.

The Vortian's scarred, purple-gray skin revealed a young face, his youth having been veiled by years of perilous, brutal battle. He drowsily opened his eyes and looked into hers, his expression wrinkled with pain and confusion.

Pip crouched down closer to him. He leaned himself up on his forearms and coughed sickly, fresh pink blood spilling out onto his chest. He grimaced and settled himself onto his back once again, grinding his teeth in discomfort.

"Tell your friend," he groaned painfully, "that she's a horrible shot."

"What are you doing here?" Pip demanded, her eyes narrow and sharp. "How did you find this place?"

The Vortian frowned. "Look, I don't want my last moments of life spent being interrogated," he said slowly, suppressing a cough. "I want you to do something for me." He reached shakily toward the left pocket of his utility pants, finding it difficult to unlatch. Once he did, he slipped his hand inside and pulled out a piece of reinforced glass with a color image burned into it. He handed it over to Pip.

Pip took it skeptically, her eyes only averting from him to look down at the image he had given her. It was a photo of a better time, capturing a moment that radiated a feeling of kinship, happiness, and love. In the image the Vortian stood in the middle with his arms over the shoulders of the Irken Elite and the hooded female. The hooded female looked considerably younger then, but the Elite and Vortian hadn't changed much since.

She looked back to him quizzically. She opened her mouth to speak, but he spoke first.

"I know they're dead," he said wistfully, the corner of his mouth twitching and betraying his sense of composure. "That's Nyx on the right a few years after we saved her from her decimated home planet," he explained, tilting his head toward the left side of the image. "That's the Major, of course. Looks-wise, you kind of remind me of her when she and I first met, when she saved my life." He breathed in harshly and sat upright again. As he coughed, more pink blood dribbled down his chin. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand and leaned back down again. "All I ask is that you remember us. Find the son of bitch that sent us here and give him hell. He sent us knowing we would die, and I want you to make him pay or find someone that will."

A feeling of deep, long-suppressed sadness erupted from somewhere within Pip, a well of emotion she had almost forgot existed. His voice and countenance mirrored those a long-lost ghost, a spirit that has haunted her long before the lab, before Portia, before she could know what love and compassion felt like.

And in that moment she felt it, gazing into his rose-colored eyes so much like the ones from so long ago, so distant to her now and yet still so close.

"The one with the eyes," the Vortian continued. "These deep, green eyes that pierce into your soul, make you think, do, and feel things..." he paused, his breathing labored and weak. "They made me feel…."

"What?" Pip asked, placing her hands onto the Voritan's cheeks. She cradled his head in her hands. "What did they make you feel?"

His head felt heavy against her touch as his neck rolled to the side limply, his eyes still looking up at her. Pip patted his face gently at first. When he didn't respond, she patted it harder. When that didn't work, she held him at the temples of his skull and shook him up and down, biting her lip and shaking her head with denial.

"No," she whispered. "You have to tell me more!" she cried, taking him by the shoulders and pulling him upright. "You _have_ to tell me about the eyes! You have to tell me!" Pip shook him once more before she gave up, his body going against her strength and falling back against the ground.


	18. Corrupted Data

Cypher Six was meditative, standing at the only barrier that separated him and the Overmind: a single door. His eyes were closed, features relaxed, his posture perfect. He breathed in slowly, filling himself with a sense of clarity and calm. But Six knew that this peace would be such as the eye of a great storm: enticing, although fleeting.

He exhaled a smooth, airy sigh, finally opening his eyes. He found himself overcome with a sense of dreadful anticipation, a completely different feeling than the first time he gazed upon this door. In the past Six had considered it a masterpiece. Three circular silver locks connected on each point of a "V" shaped overlay, creating a hydraulic pathway between each of the locks. Though that wasn't the impressive part.

Cypher Six took another deep breath and placed his right hand against the door controls, which was centered in the bottommost lock of the "V". An emerald green light radiated from his touch, spilling out into the two stems of the hydraulic overlay that curved and reached upward in interconnected knots, spreading to the two uppermost locks. The centermost part of the upper locks protruded outward, leaving Six to witness the engineering genius of the clockwork that lay underneath, a complex series of gears shifting and interlocking with one another in inconceivable patterns, impossible to follow.

A thin fog wafted from the crack unveiled by the door's protrusion down the center as tumblers rearranged and set themselves in place. The fog billowed up in wispy clouds around his feet. The pressure hit Cypher Six all at once, the sensation of decompression gently rustling his clothing and antennae, and causing his auricle cavities to pop.

Cypher Six stepped through the threshold with rehearsed confidence, shoulders back and chin held high. His image was splayed with lines of emerald light, painting his figure against the blackness of the room.

He walked a path illuminated by the same green light of the doorway, stretching out into two straight, thick lines on either side. His steps were careful and calculated as he found his eyes wandering about the room, taking in the twinkling of a planetarium of green "stars" suspended in its vast, ominous darkness.

And suddenly as he neared the end of the path, a single green eye winked open, peering at him through the thick fog that had begun to rise as if from a string of unseen fissures. Something beneath Cypher Six's feet groaned, a deep, vibrating sensation that crescendoed into a muted, gentle quake that shook the foundation of the room.

Then, one by one, nine others soon followed. They were devoid of expression, yet conveyed volumes of knowledge, wisdom, and millennia of experience. Out of both respect and an overwhelming sense of awe, Cypher Six bent down on one knee, his gaze locked on the loose wires about his feet.

The Overmind's words boomed, echoing like a yawning chasm. "State your purpose, Cypher Six."

_My purpose…._

Six became all too aware of the lump in his throat, and the roughness of his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he spoke slowly, answering with recited composure. "I request your guidance, Almighty Overmind," he said smoothly, ignoring the pounding heart in his chest. "I believe that there is a fault in my programming."

The Overmind was silent for several moments, moaning lowly in what Six interpreted as consideration. After several moments more, he spoke again. "Rise, Cypher."

Cypher Six did as instructed and stood, crossing his arms rigidly behind the small of his back. A dim white light flickered at the center of the garden of emerald eyes, and then illuminated so brightly and so suddenly that Six brought up a hand to shield his gaze.

The light revealed a forest of thick, black and silver tendrils that climbed over the walls, leaving no trace of any of the original architecture in the large, otherwise vacant room. They hung from the high ceiling and crawled over the floor, weaving in and out of themselves in an array of graceful, elaborate patterns that could have been considered purely intentional. The snaked wires led up to the body of the Overmind: a metallic, globular monitor with those ten emerald eyes, and a bright white screen at its center.

"I remember the last, and the first time, you stood before me, not too long after you departed the smeethood of your life," the Overmind said. "It has been one hundred thirty standard years since then. We have a lot of catching up to do."

Cypher Six heard a faint shuffling behind him. His reaction time was limited to the turn of his head as two data-reading cables attached to both of the nodules on the bottommost corners of his PAK. Six gasped and lurched forward in a mixture of surprise and sensation, looking back to the screen that flickered familiar, distant images that faded into the forefront of his eyes.

His consciousness melded with the scenes of his life manifested before him, helpless to stop the data transfer. Cypher Six could only watch as the past his life flashed before him from his own point of view; he relived all of his thoughts and actions of those thirteen years in a single, painful instant while enduring a paradoxical thrill of an agonizingly long eternity, suspended somewhere between the digital and reality.

It left him sweating, breathing heavily, his heart and head pounding in unison, palms and knees both pressed against the ground. The data trail led him up to this very moment, the images melding with his current perceivable surroundings, granting him his eyesight once again. Six blinked several times, hesitant at first to believe that he had been dropped back into the present. Then he looked up, and found the Overmind's screen to be blank and blue-white. The image of nothingness.

Cypher Six steadied himself on his knees, placing his curled fists on the tops of his thighs. The data-reading cables detached themselves from his PAK, flooding him with a sense of comfort that could not match his sense of relief.

"You're a _computer_ ," The Overmind's voice spoke with a hint of wonder, his syllables pronounced with an upward inflection.

"Not quite yet," Cypher Six admitted defensively, raising his head to meet the Overmind's multiple eyes. "But close. I've had some… _adjustments._ "

Six expected to be met with anger from the Overmind. He presumed that the discovery would have him struck down, dismantled, and deactivated. He would die here for his treason against the Overmind's personal image, his strict idea of unwavering perfection.

However -

A gurgling sound erupted from the Overmind's core, an amused, delighted thunder. Laughter.

"Your only error has been in judging yourself less than perfect," the Overmind said finally, satisfaction still lacing his words. "To think differently is a ridiculous suggestion."

A flood of confusion filled Cypher Six. His brow wrinkled, and his features twisted honestly in bewilderment. "Isn't that why I was sent here by Tallest Zeta?" he asked, pushing himself back up onto his feet. Six stood tall before the Overmind, his back straight, and his words genuine. "Did I not act out against protocol? Did I not disobey the wishes of my Tallest? Aren't I… broken?"

"You have respected, upheld, and reinforced every single ideology that makes the Irken Empire the greatest civilization in the entirety of our known cosmos. You are not broken," he said, voice bellowing out into the emptiness of the room. "The society you serve is broken."

Six found himself shaking his head in disbelief, taking a few steps back and away from the Overmind. "No. That is not true. It can't be true."

"Is it not?" the Overmind challenged him.

Cypher Six considered this for a moment, silent, vigilant in his thoughts. "To say such a thing… is _heresy_."

"Heresy, spoken to the champion of heretics."

All at once the room was saturated in emerald light, drenching the room in complementary colors. Cypher Six's skin turned a light, milky pink, and the body of the Overmind glittered a silvery white, turning his ten eyes a muted shade of crimson. The contrast was blinding, and Cypher Six struggled to keep his eyes open against the Overmind's overwhelming radiance.

"The virtues by which our society was founded upon have been twisted, perverted, and violated into a grotesque, apostate simulacrum. The Empire you once dreamed of has fallen to the sins of greed and gluttony, the limbs of this great Empire feeding the mouths of the power hungry. The backs of the citizens will break as the bellies of the traitorous leaders swell with their own cascading failures. The Empire is choking on tumorous growths that have uplifted themselves to the highest stations. It cannot be allowed any longer." the Overmind resounded, his voice so astonishingly strident, Six could feel every syllable resonate through his chest.

"I have a mission for you, Cypher."  


***

He was coming.

She was sure of it.

She paced back and forth alone amongst the lab tables that stretched out in the center of the room, sparkling white metal laced with phenolic resin on their surfaces. Shelves stood tall in between the tables, lined with heavily used but relatively spotless glassware, rows and rows of flasks, beakers and cylinders all neatly arranged according to ascending size. The meticulous cleanliness and tidiness of it all infuriated Jek. She felt oppressed by the perfectness of the shining lab tables, the glimmering glassware, the bright, _bright_ lights….

Oh, but the glassware.

_The glass._

Jek wanted to break them all, every last piece, to watch them shatter about the floor in a hailstorm of glass, ruining their perfect imperfection. She felt like them: fragile, vulnerable, transparent.

She picked up a flask from the shelf. A small one, most delicate looking with its thin neck and round bottom. It fit perfectly in the size of her hand, the bottom cradled gently by the soft curvature of her palm. Jek squeezed it lightly, careful to apply just enough pressure to the glass that it would not break in her hand, but enough to make her feel like it could.

It angered her. Its fragility, the susceptibility to the will of whoever possessed it.

Just as Jek reared her arm back with the flask in hand, she caught a glimpse of movement out of her peripheral vision. She turned quickly, surprised to find it was caused by her own reflection.

On the wall adjacent to her was a wash basin with a rectangular mirror hanging just above it, both an oddity and a necessity of their society. Jek stared into the mirror, horrified by what she saw.

From a few units away, all she could see was her chest up. Her gray uniform was stained black and brown with grime, leaving the exposed skin of her collarbone and forearms looking very much the same. Hardly any pale green skin pierced through the layers upon layers of filth.

She neared the mirror slowly, placing the flask down carefully on a lab table as she passed it, shrugging it off as a fleeting thought. Her gloved hands curled around the wash basin and she leaned in close to her reflection, meeting her own, wide-eyed gaze.

What could be said for her chest and forearms could also be said for her face; the color of her skin was buried in dirt and grime, distorting and erasing Jek's features. She looked less like an Irken and more like a monster of an insectoid kind with her bulging, protuberant eyes, and the illusion of a narrowed jaw and sunken cheeks.

Jek peered past herself to the lab that stretched behind her, white, silent and complacent in her image of chaos. And as she looked back to her reflection she noticed it: a bold splash of color across her dirtied chin, darkened and pink, the color of Irken blood.

Somewhat alarmed, she slipped off the glove on her left hand. She wiped the back of her clean hand against her chin, peeling off the excess with one of her nails. The skin underneath was smooth and undamaged.

_Then why -_

Jek blinked down to her uniform and found herself to had been anointed with a mixture of dull pink and blackened purple spattered thickly across her thighs. She gasped in disgust, lurching forward over the wash basin as she resisted the urge to vomit. Images of the Irken Elite and the young, hooded female swam in her mind, playing backward from the time of their violent end.

All she could see was the alien decapitating the Irken Elite over and over, watching her body go limp and the light leave her eyes. Then there was Nyx who was endlessly bitten into, her black skin swinging sickly from her chin, how throughout all of the pain, she still had nothing to say. The delighted gurgles and hot, gasping breath of the aliens still resonated in Jek's mind. The crunching and grinding of their teeth as they ripped through Nyx's and the Elite's flesh and bone, and the image of their bloodied corpses would haunt her forever.

Jek's lips quivered as she recalled it, her hands curled tightly around the edge of the wash basin. For several moments she sobbed between shivering breaths, but she cried no tears. Not now. Not anymore.

Jek undressed and found the shower. She hopped in readily, desperately, closing a folding glass door around her. She watched as the thick, yellow-brown grime melted off of her skin, cleansed by the de-hydrolyzed saline that flowed against her. Jek raked herself with her sharp, angular nails as her skin started to burn a light pink, imagining that what she was scraping off was everything that Dirk had ever done with her, and to her; all of the wrongdoings and misdeeds he had committed toward other innocents; all of the lives he had ended and ruined. All of the awful things that had happened to her happened because of him, and Jek wanted not a single trace of him left on her, or the memories of what had happened at the comm array.

 _But why?_ she wondered. Why would Dirk send mercenaries to the planet when he easily could have done it himself? He was resourceful enough, powerful enough, influential enough if he was capable of affording mercenaries, and sending them down to the surface so quickly. Jek had only been in Pip's lab a couple of days, and it was still hard to tell how much longer before that when she was healing in the fluid tank.

The shower left Jek feeling a vague, empty sense of relief, but also full of answerless questions.

As Jek walked from the shower to Pip's personal room to raid her closet for something else that might fit her, she was patting herself the rest of the way dry, and noticed she wasn't alone.

Pip leaned against the lab table near the lab's entrance, right where Jek had set down the datapad as she walked in. She was still clad in her all-black body suit, which was miraculously clean and untouched by any remnants of what happened in the tunnels. A small smirk played across her features, a glint of mischief in her violet stare.

Jek jerked the towel around her front, aware it was all too late to retain her modesty. Under the rosy tint of her cheeks from the exposure of the hot saline arose her embarrassment, turning her face a bright red not too dissimilar from the shade of her eyes. Words struggled to reach her lips, her mind filling with a million strings of angry questions, but she could only ask one.

"What do you want?"

"To talk," Pip answered, her serious tone contradicting the playful expression she wore. She dipped her head to her left toward the datapad resting on the lab table. "So, what did you think?"

"I didn't read it," Jek replied flatly. "How long have you been -"

"You didn't?" Pip asked with mild surprise. "Why not?"

"Because despite whatever that datapad contains, it changes nothing. It doesn't matter."

"It doesn't _matter_?" Pip's brows met in a thick crinkle between her eyes, her face contorted with a mixture of confusion and bewilderment. "How can you say that? It could mean your life, Jek."

"I'm not denying that. But no matter what is on there doesn't change the fact that mercenaries were sent here, or my belief that Dirk was the one who did it," Jek explained, rigid in her stance. "And if Dirk is truly coming here, I'm going to be ready for him. He will not keep me from leaving this planet with both my life and freedom intact."

"Admirable, but foolish," Pip muttered, folding her arms over her chest. "Dirk is a _Cypher_ , Jek. You've seen what he can do."

Jek matched her stance, crossing her arms. "I've lived this long."

"That's because he's toying with you!" Pip snarled, snapping the datapad back onto the lab table. "If a Cypher wants someone dead, they _die_. This whole time you've been nothing but a plaything to him of consciousness and flesh." Her eyes narrowed, her voice dripping with cynicism.

Jek's face flooded with color, drowning her features in a rich shade of crimson. Her expression was flogged with anger and hurt as she opened her mouth to speak, but her words were delayed by the overwhelming emotions that threatened to grip her, tightening around her throat. "That still changes nothing," she croaked, stung by the harshness of Pip's words. "I'm not his toy anymore."

A thin smile crossed Pip's lips. She picked up the datapad and held it out to Jek. "Wouldn't you like to know?" she asked, urging Jek to cave into the pressure. "Wouldn't you like to be sure?"

Jek's eyes narrowed as she glared down at the datapad, then back to Pip. "Yeah," she said, slipping the datapad gently from Pip's fingers, "just about as sure as I am that you knew the mercenaries were coming, as you so coincidentally lay in wait with your unusually quickly assembled horde of monsters for an opportune moment, at the exact location which you just sent me hardly an hour prior."

Pip snorted and laughed, a lighthearted, girlish laugh. Her smile widened knowingly, her eyes glittering with genuine amusement. "Oh, Jek, do you know how long it's been since someone has accused me of something?" she sighed, wrapping her arms around herself slowly, almost sensually. "It feels _so_ good."

"I'm not accusing you of anything," Jek said firmly, "I'm just stating facts."

"Now you're just disappointing me," Pip muttered, letting her arms fall back to her sides. Her eyes veered off coldly into the distance, thin and dissatisfied.

"But," Jek piped up, drawing back Pip's attention, "I still do want to know how on the entire surface of the planet they happened to land right near the communications array. It's almost as if they knew where we were. Dirk didn't even know about this place. He couldn't. I didn't pick up signals from the communications array or your laboratory on the transport ship's scanners neither in orbit nor on the surface."

"The lab is nestled deep in the rock of this particular tunnel system for that very reason," Pip explained. "And the comm array was still damaged at that time. It _had_ no signal."

Jek's eyes brightened with intrigue, an idea riding on the coattails of her thoughts. "That could only mean that whoever knew about the communications array either accessed it from old data logs stored in some kind of database, or they themselves had access to it before by receiving data from it in the past."

"Smart girl!" Pip exclaimed, seeming genuinely impressed. "Will you be able to tell?"

Jek was quiet throughout her consideration of the possibility. "Probably," she said, her lips pursed in thought. "It depends on the kind of data we find."

"Alright!" Pip clapped her hands together excitedly. "What are we waiting for? Let's bust that bad boy open!"

"No. Not yet." Jek turned the datapad on its side and pointed to the little black disk sticking out from one of its dataports, leaning it in toward Pip for her to see. "This is highly suspicious. If we tamper with the datapad in any wrong way, we could be in some serious danger. It could be bugged."

"So, what do we do?"

"We construct a space that is an electromagnetic null zone, then we take it apart, piece by piece. We'll extract the data once the threat is gone, and look at it indirectly."

"Refresh my memory: that kind of zone offsets any type of transceiver, making it impossible for a signal to get in or get out, right?"

"Right."

Pip nodded, her hand cradling her chin in thought. "I think I have some spare conductive metal lying around," she mumbled. "We can make it happen, but you're going to have to get dressed first. Unless," she smiled, "skimping around my lab is more your style."

Jek coughed a harsh laugh as she turned away from Pip, walking toward the door to her personal room. The door whispered gently open, and Jek started to step through. But then she stopped, peering over her shoulder back at Pip with a crooked, amused grin. "Perhaps if it was, you wouldn't feel the need to spy on me in the shower anymore."

Pip opened her mouth to say something, but Jek was already through the door. Just as it began to close she let the towel drop around her feet, and laughed.


	19. Bug Hunt

As Jek approached the sliding glass door to the newly constructed electromagnetic null zone, Pip met her on the other side of it. She opened it for Jek, standing back as she entered the closet-sized rectangular room, just large enough for them both to fit inside.

It was constructed with panes of thick, reinforced, conductive glass. Above, below, and between each pane was a strip of ionized metal that was fed with a gentle electric current, ensuring them safety from any incoming and outgoing signals.

"Did you find the data disk?" Pip asked. She cradled a hot mug of coffee in her hands.

Jek uncurled her hand from around a thin red data disk, holding it between two of her fingers. "This one, right?"

Pip nodded, talking around the edge of her cup. "Yeah, that's the one."

Jek moved past her to a small glass table, jerry-rigged but mostly stable. On it rested a portable computer and the dull, silver datapad, scratched and dirtied still from its encounter at the comm array. If it had eyes, Jek would have sworn it was glaring at her.

She placed the red data disk away from the datapad, and took the datapad in her hands. Jek looked over it for the upteenth time, having memorized where every seal was located, every scratch and ding that looked any bit older than the few days that had passed since it had been in her possession. Finding nothing new, Jek took a deep breath, plucked out a tiny, precise electronic laser, and got to work.

She pulled down a pair of goggles over her eyes, and bent down close to the datapad, flipping it over on its front to expose the slightly upturned edges of its back. In the reflection of the glass wall in front of her she could see Pip's eyes on her, curious and watchful as she quietly sipped her coffee.

Jek turned on the precision laser and began burning into the datapad along its edges, careful not to linger too long and scorch the insides of what could potentially be Pandora's box. As she came to a corner, Jek turned the laser off, turned the datapad clockwise, and began again.

In a matter of minutes Jek was lifting the back of the datapad off, revealing a city of internal components. At first glance they all seemed to be factory-made, and none of the parts had been replaced before. If Jek had to bet on it, she would assume that the datapad hadn't been opened since the day it was sealed by some poor Screwhead slave or Irken assembly drone.

The sight of the mini black disk sticking out from the left side of the opened datapad fell heavy on her eyes. She took a set of thin tweezers and pushed gently against its side, the thick metal piece locked into place by the datapad's connection port. The disk popped out with ease.

Carefully, Jek took the small disk in her fingers. She held it up to the light, checking for any words, numerics or symbols, but found it to be completely devoid of any indication of brand, manufacture or make.

Then she turned it over on its side. The top and bottom components seemed to click together. She used the tweezers to pry the two apart, exposing its insides. Immediately, something stood out to her:

A red diamond the size of a pinhead, nestled in between the disk's controller and memory chips.

"Take a look at this," Jek said quietly, cautiously plucking the red crystal out from the data disk with the set of tweezers. She set it on the table as Pip approached from behind her, and moved over so she could take a closer look.

Pip held out her hand to Jek, and Jek passed her the tweezers she had been using. Pip bent down close to the diamond and picked it up, her violet eyes squinting against its luminous color as she turned it in the light of the room. She did this for only a few moments before turning back to Jek, her brow raised high with piqued interest, wrinkling around the psionic transmitter implanted in her skull. "It's a diamond. Lab-grown. There's some unnatural molecular structure to it."

"You're right. But it's more than that. It's a _bug_ ," Jek replied, tugging the goggles up past her eyes. "This diamond is capable of pinpointing its location anywhere on a planet with a sun through the use of the sun's magnetic waves. It's extremely old geolocation technology, verging on ancient."

"Out of all the bugs he could have used he chose some old, obsolete diamond."

"Red diamonds don't interfere with the signals of more recent technologies, and are discreet enough to not be noticed by anything that also uses magnetic waves as a method of detection," Jek explained, scowling down at the diamond with contempt. "He was smart to do this. I just wonder how much information he's been able to accumulate from it."

Pip grimaced, her expression hardened with thought as she brought her mug to her lips. But she didn't drink. "That means he probably knows where we are," she muttered, her voice echoing from the inside of the cup. "Turning the datapad off might have kept the disk from transmitting information, but not the diamond."

"The diamond can't transmit without the data disk as an energy source, but it can store information without it," Jek said. She crossed her arms, her hands squeezing around her biceps nervously. "Although, I agree with you. He probably does know where we are." Jek's voice weakened the more she spoke. Her face was draining quickly of color. "We didn't turn off the datapad until after it had been brought back to the lab."

Pip noticed her discomfort. Her expression softened slightly as she took a step toward Jek, setting her coffee cup on the glass table.

And then an alarm wailed a screeching, piercing sound, over, and over, and over again. Jek's hands slapped against the openings of her aurical cavities and Pip twisted around quickly, facing the red flashing light above the door to the exit of the lab. Her eyes widened in apparent confusion, her lips slightly parted as if she were about to speak.

"What does that mean?" Jek raised her voice against the noise, but her words were mostly drowned out by the high-pitched alarm.

"Probably nothing," Pip shouted, her deeper voice resonating on a decibel that didn't clash with the constant shrieking. "Keep going and transfer the data. I'm going to check it out."

Knowing words would be useless, Jek offered Pip a quick, nervous nod. Pip nodded back, her gesture strong and sure. She turned and left the null zone quickly, literally disappearing as she entered the main room of the lab. The only indication of her exit was the door opening seemingly by itself, and the heaviness that fell on Jek in Pip's absence.

It took strength for Jek to free her hands; the alarm hurt her head from the inside out, making her eyes feel like they were swelling out of their sockets every time the alarm blared like a sharp, painful heartbeat. But the pressure was on. She had to transfer this data as quickly as possible. She didn't know what the alarm could mean, but she supposed it couldn't be good. And Jek was sure she wasn't lucky enough for it to be nothing.

_It's Dirk,_ that voice in the back of her mind jeered, hatefully mocking all of her efforts to forget him, and forget his name. _It's Dirk, and he's coming to get you._

Her grip shook around the quartz-cored, data transferring laser pen in her hand. It was a struggle to keep herself steady, angling the laser's beam just right onto the memory chip of the black disk long enough to copy the information onto the pen. Seconds felt like agonizing minutes, and she felt herself looking up and around, over her shoulders every time she looked down for a mere moment, the pressing feeling of fear and unsurety gripping her senses.

With the copying done, Jek began the transfer to the red data disk. She positioned the laser onto the red disk's memory chip, and waited. Each wail of the alarm blared through her chest, matching with her heartbeat. Her breath was strained and heavy even as the transfer completed - arguably moreso. The anticipation of the data disk's contents paired with the deafening cries of the alarm were sense-shattering.

But Jek had to know. Even when faced with a potential emergency, she knew she had to know.

Jek hurriedly shoved the copied, red data disk into the portable computer she had set up on the glass table. The file popped up in the bottom right corner, and she selected it, clicking it multiple times in her haste.

Finally, it appeared to her. The worst possible thing beyond the stretch of her imagination -

She barely had time to process it all before Pip ran through the sliding door, pushing it aside with a loud twack. It caught Jek off-guard, wide-eyed, and unprepared for what she had to say next.

"I hope you're just as good of a mechanic as you are a pilot," Pip said breathlessly, her face flushed with an exhausted, heavy color. "The ship the mercs brought with them is about to explode."

" _What_?"

They huddled closely together, and spoke right into each other's auricles against the sound of the alarm. "The aliens have ripped the ship to near pieces," Pip explained, her voice quick and thin from exertion. She breathed quickly, her words escaping her in harsh, short gasps. "They've damaged the warp core of the ship, and its computer has initiated a self-destruct sequence for an intrusion alert. My lab's sensors detected high levels of radiation, which is why that alarm went off."

"And if the ship self-destructs, the ruined warp core explodes with it."

"Right. That would be one hell of a blast radius."

"How much time do we have?" Jek was already standing back up and moving past Pip toward the lab's storage room as she finished her question. Pip followed closely behind her, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of her labcoat.

"I don't know," Pip admitted. She shrugged off her coat and tossed it away onto a chair as they passed the rows of lab tables and stray terminals that lined the walls of the back of the lab, past the shower and the fluid tank, revealing a thick, solid black suit underneath that covered every inch of her dark green skin with the exception of her neck and face. "I was hoping you might know something more about that."

They came to a stop at the storage room door. "A self-destruct sequence for a ship is set manually by the crew to fit flight regulations on a military ship, but for something commercial or personal, you just don't know," Jek explained quickly. The door opened and they stepped in, muting the alarm slightly. "How far is the ship?"

"Not far." Pip eyed Jek curiously as Jek reached for a rigged gun off of the top of one of the crates and started twisting a propane tank on a lip on the underside. Pip squinted at this closely, her anxious expression churning with mild amusement. "Is that a _flamethrower_? Are you using canisters from _my_ lab?"

"Yes. Got a problem with that?" Jek twisted a second one on, and checked to make sure both of them were secure and as tight as possible.

"No." Pip shook her head, a smile creeping up on her lips. "Not at all."

Together Jek and Pip ran through and outside the lab, using the same elevator that brought them up into the tunnels like before. As they ascended Jek felt her heart sink, the idea of going back up toward the surface carrying the heaviness of uncertainty.

Taking the lead, Pip led Jek briskly through the winding corridors of rock and stone, seeping translucent, sticky resin. They wore night goggles courtesy of their PAKs, lighting their way as they ran for hundreds of units.

In the midst of their frenzied running, Jek noticed a series of pictographs depicting the profiles of several peoples, ancient, tall, and thin. But she ran by too quickly to absorb the images to her memory, unable to catch the finer details of the images splayed across the walls. And that's when she remembered Invader Blue, the quiver in her voice, the overwhelming impact her words had on the entire command center of the Massive:

_"… The evidence we have collected suggests that the ancient life on this planet was Irken. Irken life thousands of years ago."_

Jek's squeedlyspooch churned, recalling that Invader Blue had also mentioned several ancient Irken remains, the cause of death for most of them undetermined, but for some the cause of death had been -

_A break in the ribcage._

How could she have forgotten this? It was easy in the midst of the chaos, the rush to get to Portia, to land, and to search for survivors. It made her wonder how much Tallest Tau knew, what he might have suspected, what he might have been aware of that even he didn't realize.

Jek glanced over to Pip at her side. She breathed heavily, her brow tense and her face colored in pink. She ran hard and determined. Her exposed skin showed the beginnings of sweat.

But who was she, really? Surviving on a dead, acidic rock with thousands of death-dealing creatures, unharmed, unwavered, untouched, where their people had once struggled, failed, and died. Jek couldn't decide. Not here, not now.

They finally came to an area of the tunnels that was devoid of a ceiling. Their PAKs bubble helmets instantly encased them in an invisible protective shield. The rock beneath them was corroded with centuries of exposure to sulfuric acid storms. Curved, funneled holes burned deep in its foundation, more visibly threatening than physically, so long as it was treaded lightly.

"Just above here," Pip said, nodding upward. Her PAK ignited as four spidery legs protruded out, a small rocket pod on each of their ends. They ignited, and lifted her up high. Jek mirrored her in doing so, coming to the rocky mouth of the crevice that she was sure she had seen from above when her cruiser crashed.

They stood on the surface of the planet. Jek blinked around with a mixture of awe and horror, the desolate landscape haunting in its sunset. Long shadows stretched behind the high, thin mountain ranges of the terrain. Stray hills and mounds littered the ground and distorted the distance between her and a deep blue ship that lay just beyond.

Even from here Jek saw what Pip didn't have time to fully describe; black, reptilian bodies crawled over the sensibly large, rectangular ship, Vortian-made and designed. Some disappeared through unseen holes, and others bit into each other, quarreling and spilling blood that ate through the metal alloy of the ship's outer shell, creating more acid-burned breaks in the ship's body.

It was an ugly, horrible display: violent, instinct-driven, impossible to fathom.

"Can't you just... _tell them to leave_?" Jek asked, turning to Pip. Pip was watching the creatures listlessly, her violet eyes distant and dark.

"No," she said, her voice unusually monotone and absent of emotion. "I can only control them in large, like-minded groups. These are too busy fighting over non-existent scraps. They're being territorial and aggressive. I can't even control a _single_ Xenomorph in that state of mind."

"A Xeno- _what_?"

"A Xenomorph," Pip repeated. "Their skin has an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. Their cells get shed during every life stage molt and is replaced with polarized silicon, giving them some serious environmental resistance."

Jek took the flamethrower in her hands, her left hand clutching the trigger. She pressed down on it harshly, and a blue-orange cloud erupted from the other end in a long plume of flame. She tried it again for safe measure and was able to reproduce the results. Jek was satisfied with this, but Pip seemed unconvinced.

"That environmental resistance also includes fire," she said skeptically.

"I don't want to kill them. I want to scare them," Jek countered. "Fear doesn't burn holes in ship decks."

Something crashed in the distance, drawing their attention. It was followed by a guttural clicking noise, and the sounds of scratching against metal, and echoed, distant screaming. Jek flinched at the sound, and her eyes met Pip's. They knew they didn't have much time left.

Jek cursed under her breath, and followed Pip straight into hell.


	20. Wanted

Tallest Zeta was pensive as she stood on the observatory deck of the Massive. Her arms were linked behind the small of her long, ringed spine, rigid.

She was silhouetted against the scene that stretched before her. Long ribbons of colorful gases and stars wrapped together in a dazzling light show. It was as it was meant to be; two unstoppable forces guided by the ultimate fate of the universe, wrapped in a powerful embrace.

Outwardly Zeta was calm and peaceful, but behind her sapphire eyes was an insatiable, gnawing hunger. She seemed to be musing on the scene, a thin, slight smile on her lips as Cypher Six approached her from behind, his steps drowned by the vastness of the circular observation deck. Once beside Zeta he stood still, his calm posture matching hers.

He gazed out into the depths of space alongside her. Distant stars blinked and twinkled with blue and white light where a merged galaxy had exploded. Two long tails of these stars extended from the center of two massive systems, swirling slowly against the gravity of their collision, allowing physics to guide them in their fight for dominance over the other in an eons-long light-show of green, yellow, and purple gases.

Both galaxies had once held an individual power, floating slowly toward each other through space. Time had passed, and they gave birth to life. Planets and moons formed that budded with life. Some flourished. Others did not. All that bound them was time, counting down to the moment that two unstoppable, immovable forces of nature would be bound to each other, leading to their ultimate ends.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Tallest Zeta said, her voice low. "It's incredible that our people have been able to see so much of our universe. It's a shame that we don't seem to appreciate it more."

Cypher Six understood. They were the only two people on the observatory deck. It was always isolated and private despite being one of the only places available to all aboard the Massive.

"Yes," he agreed. "It is beautiful. It emanates a raw power grown fragile in age and circumstance."

Tallest Zeta hummed quietly in response, and chuckled lightly. Her lips curled in a slight smile. "I trust that your little problem was corrected." Zeta finally looked down at Six, meeting his gaze. Her eyes seemed frustrated, her brow furrowed, eclipsing the light humor in her voice.

"Yes. I was... _misguided_ ," Cypher Six began, thoughtful when selecting his words. "I was corrupted, perhaps even broken, but the Overmind reminded me of my purpose." Six bent down on one knee, bowing to Zeta with a hand over his heart, the other steadying his weight against the cool, alloyed ground. "I am ready to service our great Empire once again, my Tallest."

Zeta smiled a toothy grin. An airy, girlish laugh escaped her as she absorbed the pleasure of the moment, reaching out her hand to Cypher Six. He noticed her gesture and looked up suddenly, confused.

Zeta flexed her two long, thin fingers, and nodded expectantly. Cypher Six took her hand, and she pulled him up, his own hand overwhelmed by their differences in size. She gazed down at the grip that they shared and gently interlocked their fingers and gave Six a soft, tender squeeze.

It wasn't her usual touch, casual, and light; her hand felt heavy in his, warm and yearning. It was the kind of touch he had only experienced with one other, and that other was not Zeta. Zeta could not fill that place, and he could not do the same for her.

Cypher Six frowned and averted his eyes, slowly. "I'm not him," he said quietly, letting his fingers slip over hers as he drew them away. "I am not the Overmind."

Tallest Zeta's jaw set harshly. She quickly turned her attention back to the collided galaxies, ruined, and dispersed. When she spoke, her voice was a low, hushed whisper. "You are… so much like him."

"Because I am a clone."

Zeta crossed her arms. There was a long pause, a tense silence. Cypher Six could not understand the way she felt, or the extent of what she could have possibly wanted.

"The reason I called you here," Tallest Zeta began, inhaling a sharp breath, "is because people are starting to ask questions about Tau's death.

"We need a cover story. I've been feigning mourning since then, so I will not likely become suspect to anyone's suspicions. But you," she said, poking an accusing finger against Six's forehead, "slaughtered some of the transport ship's crew. I have twelve mostly sane witnesses to your crimes that I've been able to keep silent so far, but the nature of the event caused quite a stir. Our people are loyal to us Tallests, and the death of one has come as a horrible shock. People want to know what happened."

"Naturally."

"I have decided," Zeta continued, "that it would be in our best interest to deter the populus from the unfortunate event by giving them something more unifying in purpose - a common enemy."

Cypher Six tilted his head with genuine interest, but remained otherwise silent.

"We're going to tell them who killed Tau," she said, hovering slowly toward Six, drawing herself closer to him. "And when we do, they will be too distracted by anger, hate, and rage directed _elsewhere_ that they will not notice what we are doing _here_."

"A solid plan," Six muttered, nodding slowly in agreement as he pieced the implications of her words together. "Framing someone is a clean exit."

"Precisely," Zeta said, smiling. She tapped Six gently on his shoulder, tilting her head toward his PAK. "Pull out your datapad, Cypher. Tell me what you see."

Six blinked with surprise, caught off guard by her sudden request. His PAK opened up and handed him his datapad. He took it in his hands gently, and tugged off the glove on his left hand. He swiped the screen with his index finger, bypassing the need for a passcode. On the screen he noticed a bright red bar at the top: a government-issued high security alert.

He glanced to Zeta quizzically, who offered an encouraging nod to him in response. Cypher Six pressed the bar, prompting the alert to unfold into a text box. And immediately, something stood out to him, churning his squeedlyspooch, gnawing at his insides, making him feel sick.

_Jek._

It was Jek's picture, attached to a lengthy description of her crimes against the Empire. He read it to himself in silence:

_WANTED_

_JEK_

_FEMALE, 24 YEARS OF AGE, EYES: RED, HEIGHT: 140 CENTIUNITS, WEIGHT: 35 KILOGRAMS_

_FOR HIGH TREASON, DEATH OF CIVILIANS, MURDER OF THE ALMIGHTY TALLEST TAU_

_SUBJECT GUILTY OF DISLOYAL, MALICIOUS ACTS AGAINST THE EMPIRE: COOPERATING WITH TERRORIST OPERATION, PRE-MEDITATED MURDER OF CIVILIANS AND THE ALMIGHTY TALLEST TAU BY USE OF HIGHLY DANGEROUS, UNKNOWN, SILICON-BASED ORGANISM…._

There was more. A long, graphic description of torture, and a reward. But he didn't read it. He couldn't bring himself to read any more.

Cypher Six felt his face growing hot, and he was grateful to his modified body that he wasn't showing color. His teeth gritted behind his lips. Everything inside him raged, everything that had been buried deep within Six for too long. The emotions he had suppressed came rushing all at once. His breathing was quickening, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He knew his eyes were glaring at her, but Zeta seemed to take pleasure in it. She wore her famous shit-eating grin, one that was usually preserved only for her worst, most petty, darkest schemes. Six had only witnessed it in hindsight. But now he was a victim.

"You're _punishing_ me," Six snarled, his voice low and accusing. His fingers curled around the datapad tightly, threatening to crush it in his grasp.

Zeta wagged a finger derisively, her spine craning as she bent down to meet his fiery gaze. "You said it yourself, Cypher," she mused, her tone jeering and condescending. She blinked, her curled lashes fluttering about her sapphire eyes like a pair of wings. "That girl was in the room when Tau died. She could be the only logical, rational explanation for this death."

Six recoiled from her in disgust, his eyes narrowed and furious. "She was harmless."

"That is not what you told me in our transmission only days ago," Zeta chimed. "You said that she was a threat to your mission. You killed her."

Cypher Six stood silently all except for the heavy sounds of his breathing. He looked to the ground at his feet, and could feel himself collapsing like a black hole imploding in on itself, swallowing itself up. He tried to logically sort through his thoughts but only a well of emotion was to be found. It bubbled up within him slowly at first, and erupted like ferocious wave. Nothing he felt made any sense.

But then, it _did._

"You _are_ punishing me," he hissed, his lip curled into a snarl. He pointed an accusing finger at Zeta, jabbing it out in the air like a sharpened dagger. "You made me kill her."

Six tossed the datapad at Zeta's feet. It landed with a loud crack as the screen shattered, sending lines of forked lightning across its display. It had been a gift from her once he had come of age, his direct line exclusively to her. But he didn't want it anymore. He had no need for it now.

Just as he turned to walk away, she called out to him.

"Wherever you think you are going, you can't."

Six stopped dead and craned his head over his shoulder, visibly frowning.

"You're staying here with _me_ ," Zeta stated. She hovered in place, unmoving, smirking. "Our plan has nearly come to fruition. I need you here to make sure that it goes smoothly."

Cypher Six turned away, averting his gaze to the galaxies beyond. "Your will be done, my _Tallest._ "

He shrugged past Tallest Zeta and stormed out of the observatory, the heels of his boots clacking loudly against the floor. He did not dare look over his shoulder back at her. The mere thought of her expression enraged him.

The Overmind was right: Zeta was twisted. She was perverting her values with selfishness and greed, fulfilling no one's wishes but her own. Everything touched by her became corrupted. This very room, every corridor of the Massive, the entirety of the ship itself - corrupted and diseased.

He would have to enlighten her on the true vision of a perfect Empire. He would tear away Tallest Zeta's layers, stripping her and leaving her weak, naked, and vulnerable, just like she had done to him. And then, he would destroy her.

But not before destroying all that she held close and dear, as she had done for him. There was nothing that she possessed that could quite amount to everything she had taken from him, although…

… There was something _close._


	21. Heat

Flame bloomed around her, its hot tongue flickering and stinging as it stretched out before her, toward the swarming horde of Xenomorphs ahead. The aliens cried out in protest, terrified and enraged by the swirling inferno that threatened to boil their bubbling flesh. Several of them immediately retreated amid their own gruesome, anger-filled screams, their black, charred bodies slithering into the vents or out of the acid-burned holes of the main cargo hold. Only a few were unrelenting, turning on their massive, chitinous heels back to face Jek a second time.

Once again they were met with a wall of flame. The heat was so hot and fierce that it warmed Pip’s back to the point of it becoming almost unbearable. She wore a suit she had specifically designed to mirror the silicon coating of the Xenomorphs’ exterior, granting her all of their strengths and all of their weaknesses. She felt what they felt: a cooking sensation that left her skin hot beneath her suit, even as the flames billowed past her. 

As two of the aliens finally retreated, one of them decided it wasn’t going to give up. Just as it turned around as if it were going to climb through a gaping hole above Pip and Jek, it leapt back, teeth bared and claws extended. 

Jek aimed for its mouth, and blew a gust of flame into it. The fire was sent wafting up and spread about the Xenomorph’s face. The alien’s scream was gargled and pained, shifting awkwardly sideways as it lost its balance in the assault. It fell over on its side for a brief moment before gathering its wits and hoisting itself up and out through the hole it had chosen earlier. But this time, it was gone.

Pip realized only after the Xenomorphs retreated that she had been holding her breath, and Jek was too.

“Eight of them,” she sighed. “Just in this one room.” Jek glanced down at Pip, her expression winded, but surprisingly neutral. “You’ve studied these things. Do we really have a chance?”

“Yes.” Pip didn’t have to think twice. “We just have to be more deliberate and quick-thinking than they are.”

Jek was already beginning to move past her, seeming at least somewhat satisfied with her answer. She kept the flamethrower in her grip, her finger stroking the trigger, ready for any surprises. 

The path before them was littered with crates of supplies, such as plasma ammo and various dehydrated foods. Otherwise it was a straight shot to the door beyond, but the power systems of the ship were on back-up. With the light of Jek’s flame gone, the room was only illuminated by emergency lights and the door controls ahead of them. Jek stopped at the door just as Pip approached, her eyes glaring at the controls.

Pip hit the button to open the door, but it didn’t budge. She looked to her partner expectantly, and moved aside to give Jek room to work her magic. 

Jek understood without words what she had to do, and shouldered her weapon. Her gloved fingers wrapped around the casing of the door controls and yanked off the panelling. Then they wrapped around the wires underneath, pulling, separating, and coupling them until the light above the door flickered green, and it groaned open.

Pip smiled faintly as Jek took the lead, pausing as instinct compelled her to check for moving shadows. She stayed closely behind Jek as they entered the hallway. It was looked longer than it was, stretching off to the left in one direction, then the right, and to another door at the very end at the middle. Deep red shadows cast across the ship’s gray interior, a horrible color that helped blend in black alien bodies very well. It was one of the greatest reasons why her lab was disturbingly white.

“The door directly ahead probably leads to the ship’s cockpit,” Jek said quietly, thinking out loud. “There, we’ll get to the main computer so I can shut off the intrusion alert system. That will take care of the power.”

“What about the warp core?” Pip whispered back, her head jerking up toward a slight scratching sound above them. Or so she thought. 

Jek’s mouth set into a hard line. “That depends on if this ship can still fly or not.”

She started forward again. They walked past the left door first, then the right door, past a small table that had a number of neatly arranged trinkets on it. They had been strangely untouched by the aliens unlike the rest of the ship, a total mess in comparison. About their feet were random scraps of metal, glass and bits of cloth that could have been clothing or sheets at some point. The ceiling was riddled with wide, acid-charred breaks that let in the light of the setting evening sun. Beneath those holes were other holes leading down to the lower deck, and small, smoking pools of acid. She took great care in selecting where to put her feet next, and noticed Jek doing the same.

They passed under one of the breaks, and Pip dared herself to look up. Portia’s orange, evening sky burned above her, and she was thankful she saw no ominous, yellowed clouds. If there was an acid storm now, they would be completely screwed. It would be better to go to the lab and wait to die than be caught in one of those storms unprotected. 

Jek fiddled with the door controls just as she had with the last, taking out the wiring and fusing them to each other to gain access. She fumbled around for much longer than the first time.

“What’s wrong?” Pip asked.

“We might need another way in.” She continued to try to force her way through the door, but she wasn’t having any luck. Jek’s movements were becoming increasingly more anxious, next to sloppy under the pressure of losing time. 

Pip looked around quickly, assessing the the entrances and exits the hallway had to offer. There were plenty of holes leading down, but that wouldn’t get her to the cockpit. The two doors lead into isolated rooms. The only option worth considering was a circular vent that set low on the wall adjacent to the door separating them from the cockpit.

When she stepped over to the vent it opened in a slow, counterclockwise spiral, revealing a dark, stretching tunnel. From the entrance it was impossible to tell where it lead. She would have to go inside.

She and Jek shared a nervous glance. Jek’s expression was urgent, on the verge of pleading, but Pip couldn’t tell whether she understood it was their only chance, or if she was afraid of being left alone. 

Pip found herself feeling a sense of gripping hesitation, but chose to shove past it. She offered Jek a nod, and got to her knees. Just as she was about to cloak herself and disappear into the blackness, Jek called out to her.

“Be careful.”

Nothing about her life had ever been careful. 

Pip ducked into the vent. As it shut behind her, the faint flicker of white light engulfed her quickly, masking her visible presence through the manipulation of charged particles in the immediate atmosphere. She was invisible to the eye, but not to the nose, or any intuitive senses. 

Her PAK provided her with night vision, helping guide her through the vent. It proved to be somewhat labyrinthian, leading off into one left, two right, and one straight direction. She chose one of the right directions, and breathed a little easier once she realized how short the distance was to the light at the end of the vent, just a few movements within her reach.

It had all been luck. Pip popped her head through the vent into the cockpit. It was surprisingly large, capable of seating up to three people with a captain’s chair and two co-piloting seats. The cockpit looked far older than the rest of the ship, decked in the colors of dark blue and a dull, metallic gray, full of cosmetic wear and tear: scuffs on the floor and walls, missing washers and knobs on the co-piloting stations.

What was most alarming was a computer terminal that was undoubtedly much older than Pip herself, mounted before the captain's chair. It was bulky and unfashionable, Vortian made and Vortian designed. She wouldn’t be surprised if the computer was programmed solely in Vort’s native language rather than galactic basic, or any other languages beyond that. It definitely wouldn’t be Irken. 

She got up to her feet and found the door, directly to her right. Behind the viewing glass Jek was braced for an altercation, her flamethrower aimed up and forward, her back bent, legs apart. Pip tapped against the glass and Jek jumped slightly, turning around to face her. At first her eyes were wild, wide and terrified, but her expression quickly softened as relief flooded into her upon meeting Pip’s gaze.

Pip’s side of the door was manual rather than electric, having a simple sliding lock that closed it, connecting through the door to the control panel on the other side. She reached for it and slid away the lock --

At least, she tried. And tried again. And again.

It wasn’t budging. Suddenly it made sense why.

“It’s not opening,” Pip said finally, answering the unasked questions apparent in Jek’s look of confusion. “You’ve got to reconnect the panel.”

They saw them at the same time. As Jek looked back behind her, Pip looked up. 

_Xenomorphs._

Three of them were on the walls, converging on Jek left and right. They stalked slowly, soundlessly, their attention focused on the weapon that lay in Jek’s hands.

If she used the flamethrower, she might be able to scare them away. But the aliens were angry creatures, often taking signs of aggression as a challenge or as a measure of their own strength. Some were unwilling to back down from a potential fight, based simply on their level of desperation and willingness to meet the goal of the hive mind.

If she risked it, Jek might have time enough to unlock the door before they reached her. That is, if they considered her a low threat, boring prey, or they weren't hungry.

But Pip knew they were starving. 

Jek had a choice to make, and she chose to risk it all. Her back turned against the Xenomorphs as her shaking hands unwound the wiring she had done, and put them back together. Under no pressure it would have taken no time. To Pip, the tension made the moment last forever. She watched as the aliens behind Jek continued to creep ever so slowly. Their tails were starting to sway, their wet, dripping jaws unhinged slightly in anticipation as if they fed off of Jek’s outward display of fear.

And then, one of them leapt forward.

It all happened so fast. Jek pressed herself up against the door just as Pip slid it open. She closed it with a violent _slam_ , just in time for the alien to smash its chitinous helm crudely against the reinforced glass. It hissed and screeched in protest, ramming itself over and over in perilous frustration, claws and teeth bared and scraping uselessly at and around the door.

Pip looked up at Jek. They were gripping onto each other, their sharp, claw-like nails digging into each other. Jek was staring at the door, her eyes burning with the ferocity of someone who had just cheated death yet again, unsure of just how many more times that she could.

“Jek, the vent!”

Jek turned away quickly, glancing over at the vent to her left before throwing herself into the the captain's chair in front of the computer terminal. It showed the bright red screen of an intruder alert lockdown notification, enhancing the intense ruby of Jek’s eyes. She typed hurriedly and with precision even under pressure, her muscle memory, knowledge and experience effectively intercepting the security measures that stood in her way. The red died down into a flood of deep blue, white lettering stringing themselves against the backdrop.

Pip heard a sucking, clicking noise as the vent to the room shut and clasped safely against the far wall. She felt a wave of relief, but immediately went about looking for any other flaws. The only item of mention was an escape pod far off in the corner of the room, next to three spacesuits hung against the wall behind a casing of glass, dimly lit, and gently used.

“This ship _can_ fly,” Jek said, her fingers still busy on the keys to the computer terminal. “The warp core is at eighty-nine percent capacity. We have about ten minutes before it implodes. Maybe.” 

Pip approached Jek at the terminal, her eyes hardly able to follow the speed at which Jek created new strings of code, outputting a long series of information that Jek repeated back to her long before she could read it for herself. 

“It’ll take about thirty seconds to exit the atmosphere, and a little over a minute to guide the ship out far enough to where the blast radius won’t effect the planet,” Jek continued. Then, she frowned.

“What is it?”

“I’ll have to do it manually,” she explained, taking not even a moment's glance away from the screen. Her expression was grim.

Pip waited for Jek to clarify, but she didn't. She continued to glide against the keyboard, her face strained, silent. “You're going to have to tell me what that means.” 

Jek was quiet a few moments before swivelling around to meet Pip’s eyes. “It means you're going to get into the escape pod.”

“With you.”

“No.” Jek shook her head. “I can't get enough privileges in time to set a course for the ship’s auto-piloting system. I'll have to get out of the atmosphere, fly out of the planet's field of gravity, eject the warp core, and….”

Pip didn't like the way Jek paused. “And?”

“Hopefully the ship can make it back through the atmosphere a second time before it falls apart.”

“No,” Pip said defiantly. “There has to be another way.”

“The other way is to sit here and die,” Jek replied firmly, leaning forward in her seat. “Because you're not coming with me.”

“Oh?” Pip's brow quirked, and she crossed her arms, shifting all of her weight to one side with a swish of her hip. “And what are you going to do if I say no?”

“If you say no, you're just wasting my time. I'm not going to lift this ship off the ground with you in it.”

“You're going to _have_ to,” Pip argued, her face neutral and firm in her stance. She wasn't going to let Jek get her way. She wasn't going to let her risk her life alone. They were either going to survive together, or not at all. 

Jek stood up from her seat, and Pip took a step back. Her eyes stared down at Pip as her hands reached up for the collar of her engineering uniform. She began unzipping it from the top, slowly working her way down. Initially, Pip paid hardly any mind -- until Jek continued past the point of normalcy, exposing more of her chest than she expected to see. And as Jek did this, she advanced toward Pip, her gait slow and non-threatening, but Pip still felt the urge to keep stepping backward, intrigued, but suspicious.

Once Jek had freed herself down to her hips, she unlatched her belt, dropping it to the floor of the cockpit with a thick, metallic _thud_. She leaned forward, her spine bent slightly to meet Pip's eyes directly, matching her height, suggestive in her movements.

Pip averted her gaze to be kind, but Jek's hand guided her forward with a gentle tug on her chin. Pip couldn't ignore it anymore; the gentle paleness of Jek's chest, the slight curvature of her thin body as her ribs became her waist, and where her hips met the beginnings of the zipper dangling limply, teasingly within her reach. 

She shouldn't be thinking about this. Aliens were literally at their door, and with less than ten minutes to spare before their lives ended in a blinding, blistering hot nuclear reaction that would not only take them, but probably a quarter of the planet with it. 

But before she could react, Jek was already pressing her lips against hers. It was a soft kiss -- at first. Pip’s heart raced as Jek kissed her boldly, wrapping her hand around Pip's cheek. Her touch ventured upward to the back of Pip’s head, drawing her forward and further into the kiss. Jek's hot tongue parted her lips and explored her hungrily, sending Pip’s head spinning with a mixture of pleasure and urgency, the fact that they both had very little time still on the forefront of her mind. 

Their circumstance was becoming more of an afterthought as Jek's hands wandered over Pip’s body, one reaching up toward the base of her antennae, the other sliding down the small of her back. They were both equally sensitive places. Pip pulled back from their embrace just enough to draw a shaky breath… and that's when she felt it. 

Her PAK touched something. Something thick. Something hard. Something… _glass_.

She realized all too late. The glass fell behind her and she stumbled backward, losing her footing as she fell into the escape pod. Jek straightened up and slammed the override button against the shell of the pod, effectively locking Pip inside.

Pip scolded herself silently, her face still hot from their encounter, and growing hotter by the second with blinding, white, blistering anger.

Jek tricked her, and tricked her good.

She wanted to scream. But her emotions were still twisted, her breath still heavy and fast as she felt the weight of the room shift, and the ship lifted off of the planet’s surface. Her gaze burned into Jek from the short distance between them. 

Through the long viewing port of the ship, Portia’s rocky surface disappeared as the deep pink horizon bloomed, giving way to a gradually fading purple, and a menacing blue. Stars twinkled in the distance, though many were masked by the clouds of ash and acid that wafted up into the sky from the geysers and volcanoes below. It had been a long time since Pip had such a view. She had dreamed that when she would see it again, it would be the last time.

It wasn’t. 

Jek offered her a final glance. There was the beginning of an apology in her eyes as she pressed a button somewhere on the control panel, collapsing the floor beneath the escape pod.

She felt her squeedlyspooch jump into her throat as the pod dropped from the ship, hurtling toward the surface of the planet below. There were no controls inside of it; it was a last resort kind of escape pod, where you ejected and hoped for the best.

The scenery quickly switched from horizon to rocky, mountainous landscape, and cracked, charred earth. Her pod smashed into the ground and skidded several hundred units, churning up dust and loose rock as its velocity came to a gradual halt, and finally, a complete stop. 

Pip took a moment to breathe, her chest heaving as she coughed to catch up with the breath that had been stolen from her from the fall. She fell to her knees and the escape pod opened, her bubble helmet immediately making up for the loss of atmosphere. 

She looked up, watching helplessly as the mercenary ship in the distance faded into a faint speck in the sky, disappearing behind the clouds. She kneeled there in the dirt and pounded her fist into the ground, shattering small pebbles beneath her knuckles into smaller bits of rock and dust. Pip gnashed her teeth together angrily, her tongue pressed hard against them.

And then she laughed, her head leaned back toward the darkening sky, her eyes fixed where the ship had disappeared, the taste of Jek still on her lips.


	22. Isolation

Jek’s knuckles were white. She held onto the ship’s control yoke tightly as the cabin rattled all around her, her senses over-saturated by the lightening of flashing red lights and the high-pitched protests of the cockpit’s shield and fuel alarms. Portia’s atmosphere might have been thin but it was dense; making it through wasn’t going to take skill. It was going to take luck.

Her body vibrated from the ship’s instability, leaving her feeling numb in some places and sore in others. Leaning in to the controls positioned beside her, Jek gripped the lever just to her left and pulled it sharply back. The ship gave a low whir as its acceleration slowed for just a second, and then sped back up, thrusting the ship forward in a jarring, sudden motion that threw Jek back into her seat. She gritted her teeth against the pressure building in the cabin; her auricle cavities felt full to the point of bursting.

Her eyes glanced back over to the terminal’s screen. White letters yelled back at her in bold, blocky, blinking Vortian lettering:

**POWER LOW!**

Of _course_ it was. The warp core was probably draining everything it could from the fuel lines that powered it, sucking in energy that was meant to keep it functional, not to craft it into a nuclear, implosive bomb.

There was another hard, uneven shudder of protest as the ship flew against the last layers of Portia’s atmosphere. The intensity rolled over the ship like a wave, challenging the shields that held its acid-burned holes together, plugging them with electromagnetic energy that nullified the pressure from the outside. Although Portia’s atmosphere was thin, it was dense and thick from the concentrated acid and carbon dioxide that made up the bulk of it. 

For a second, Jek felt like she wasn’t going to make it. But as the wave passed and jarred the ship one final time, there was silence. The blackness of space greeted her, its vast, dark shroud of emptiness surprisingly welcoming as she left Portia farther and farther behind her, the planet quickly becoming nothing more than a pale yellow dot in the distance.

The ride was smooth from here. She exhaled heavily with relief through her nasal pores, yet her small feeling of elation didn’t last long. Jek was still losing fuel, and fast. If she were going to make it far enough to eject the warp core, she’d have quick while also being mindful of the inevitability that she could fail in her task not only to get rid of the warp core, but also escaping with her life, and somehow getting back to the planet.

Jek’s gaze fell heavy on the terminal screen. Six percent of fuel left. And --

_Four minutes to go._

She sucked in her lower lip as another surge of anxiety rushed over her. Pressed for time, pressed for fuel, pressed for a safe distance from the planet. But a certain warmth of taste clung to her tongue, a sweet, faint depth of flavor that brought with it the ghost sensation of soft, warm lips pressed against her own.

_Black coffee._

Jek swallowed hard. She was approaching a safe distance from Portia. She’d eject the warp core there and fly as quickly as she could in the opposing direction back to the planet. Jek never thought that once she left it that she would ever go back. This circumstance was special, and crucial. This wasn’t just about her anymore.

She freed her left hand from the yoke, steering with her right as she prepared the warp core for discharge. It would take thirty seconds to completely dislodge it; the only way to do so was so separate the cockpit from the rest of the ship. Not only would this save her fuel on the flight back, but it would get rid of her alien passengers. 

She had almost forgotten about them, and they must have felt like she needed to be reminded. Out in the hall behind the cockpit’s door, the reinforced glass bloomed with hot condensation. A low hiss followed, the black body of a Xenomorph shifting slowly, bowing its head to reveal its chitinous crown on the base of its skull.

Jek gasped quietly. She knew what was going to happen next, just as it happened. The alien rammed its head into the door once, twice, and over and over again, each motion becoming more desperate and violent than the last. The door was holding, but Jek couldn’t be sure for how long. The aliens weren’t only strong. They were clever, too.

Her fingers tapped briskly across the keys, and she initiated the ejection. Her movements were no longer soft and instinctual. Despite all of her muscle memory, she’d begun to shiver. With every pound at the door her breath became sharper and shallower, her key hand shaking as she finalized her decision. The computer made a soft beep, and a masculine voice announced:

_“Ship repulsion sequence initiated. Thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven…”_

It was as if the AI was counting the last seconds of Jek’s life away. She halted the ship in space, parking it against the nothingness to save on fuel. Her grip remained on both the yoke and the acceleration lever. When these grueling seconds were over, she would be ready. This would all be the past soon, nothing but another nightmare in her newly manifested reality.

Traitors. Aliens. Cyphers. This was just a progression of events destined to challenge her. So she closed her eyes, listening to the computer’s countdown as the emergency lights flashed behind her eyes. The computer’s voice mixed with the sounds of the alien’s heightening frustration. With each failed attempt of breaching the door, Jek’s confidence grew. She was going to make it. She was going to fly back to Portia, back to Pip, and all of this would be over. It would be over, and her new life could begin. A better life. A life without the Empire that abandoned her, without Dirk. A life with a new direction, exactly how she wanted it to be.

Internally she smiled, comforted by the thought that somehow, someday, these recent events would be nothing more than painful, dark, distant memories.

And then, glass shattered behind her. Jek’s eyes burst open, wide with horror as she whipped around to meet the large, clawed hand that reached through the forced window, laced with sharp shards of what was left of the glass that now littered the floor just in front of the door in a glittering pile of broken morale.

If the alien entered the cockpit, Jek could forget about her future. Her future would be the next few seconds before being ripped apart, eaten alive, serving as a last meal for the creature before it was blown into chunks and dissipated into dust. That, or Jek would be blown into bits along with it.

Just beside her chair set the flamethrower. She eyed it for a long moment and took it into her arms, abandoning the captain’s chair with a quick twirl of her seat as she jumped up to her feet, facing the Xenomorph head on. A burst of flame whirled in a thick cloud of orange and blue that engulfed the door and the alien’s hand with it. 

The alien screamed angrily, just as the computer called out the fifteen second mark. That’s all the time she had to make a difference in her situation, and she chose to be unrelenting. Jek’s finger never left the flamethrower’s trigger, throwing all of the remaining propane fuel into what she hoped would be her last assault. 

The Xenomorph recoiled, but not for long. Its hand returned, swiping furiously into the flame. Jek jumped back instinctively, missing the alien’s strike. She kept firing, hope rising in her chest the longer the alien stayed behind the flare of oily, rippling heat. 

Just then a long, spiked black appendage struck forward, jabbing as quickly and as straight as a plasma bolt could fly. Jek couldn’t move back in time. The end of the alien’s tail knocked the flamethrower out of her hands. The weapon was thrown through the air and bounced off of the cockpit’s viewport before finally sliding down the control buttons and switches mounted just underneath. It hit the floor just below the terminal uselessly, but unharmed. 

To run back over to grab the flamethrower would take time she knew she didn’t have. With only nine seconds left, Jek had to think fast. She could feel fear gripping her, tightening her throat and threatening to crush her organs from the inside out; it left her immobile for too long of a moment. 

The tail came for her next. Pain sent a jolt of hot, searing sensation up her side and down her left leg, and she screamed. She screamed like she never had before, overcome with the most intense, miserable agony beyond anything else she had ever felt or imagined. 

Shivering, panting, and deep into a cold, terrified sweat, Jek dared to look down at her hands. They were instinctively clutched at her lower abdomen, wrapped around an unfamiliar, foreign extremity. Her gaze was slow and knowing, and the more she saw the more she didn’t want to see.

 _A tail._

The ground was units beneath her. Her gray suit had turned a dingy, wet black in a gradually expanding, dark pool of blood around the curved tip of the alien’s tail. Her pelvis was shifted sideways at an unnatural angle, forced by the bulk of the Xenomorph’s biological weaponry. 

Jek shuddered. Rage washed over her and she screamed again, the overwhelming surge of anger vanishing the pain long enough for the spidery legs of her PAK thrust out past her, and latch onto the wall beside of the door. The alien pulled her forward the the PAK’s legs pulled back, bringing Jek to a stalemate with the creature on the other side. 

Her PAK’s raygun peeked out over her shoulder and fired rapidly, aimed directly at the alien that had turned around foolishly to face its prey. Jek could feel the Xenomorph’s tip sliding out of her as it lost some of its strength in surprise. The sensation was as painful as it was unusual. As its tail raked across her insides in the opposite direction it had entered, Jek’s body protested. Her muscles squeezed and spasmed against the alien’s tail, desperate and unwilling to feel it a second time. 

But she had no choice. The tail ripped out from inside of her and dropped Jek back to the floor. She landed on her PAK, which quickly reabsorbed its extremities in the abrupt turn of events. The ship trembled and the cabin swayed lightly, rocking gently for a moment before Jek actually heard it: the gritty, rubbing sound of a dislodging metal.

She hadn’t realized that the countdown ended. Those last, exhaustive seconds had felt timeless in her clouded, terrified mind. 

The cockpit had thrown up its shields as the latter part of the ship ejected, the electromagnetic influence being enough to separate herself from the Xenomorph. Even in her pain, Jek snickered half-heartedly.

Soon the alien would vaporize along with the warp core, and Jek’s revenge would be exacted. But, if she couldn’t get herself up and moving in the next few moments, she would be joining the creature in the fireworks of its last, nuclear lightshow.

Her hands were still pressed to her abdomen, just above her left hip. She drew them away slowly and shakily, her palms sweaty and hot inside her freshly-stained gloves. Her wound burned, but there was no sign of acid, and blood wasn’t spilling out. For that, she guessed she was lucky. Still, Jek wasn’t going to be able to stand on her own; her PAK could heal her, yet it was a costive and energy-expensive process. It would take time -- time that she did not have to spare.

She relied on her PAK to carry her back to the captain’s seat. Sitting up was a strenuous activity, painful and dreadfully uncomfortable. Jek settled for leaning against the back of the seat with one hand over her wound, curled up against one of the arms of the chair slightly enough to relieve some of the pressure. She yanked back the acceleration lever, switched hands, and steered the ship around, turning back to face Portia once again.

It could not have been a more beautiful planet.

Then she booked it, initiating the cockpit’s main thrusters without regard to what little fuel she had left. At only five percent and less than a minute before the warp core imploded, Jek had to make every second count. Portia quickly swelled in size, revealing the more prominent, ominous features of its physical qualities: thin, whirling clouds of sulfuric acid, high, rocky mountainous ranges, and finally, the towering portal big enough to be seen even far beyond the planet’s atmosphere.

Behind Jek through the shield-covered window of the door, light flourished, a bright, blindingly white explosion that lit up the cockpit. She closed her eyes tightly, wondering and waiting for a blistering heat to roll over her, for her cells to sizzle and erupt, her skin to melt off… _something._

But that something didn’t come. The reaction had reached its threshold and faded quickly. Within seconds, the blackness of space was restored. 

She sighed in relief, and exasperation. Jek’s gaze glanced down to her wound again: no further signs of worsening. she was feeling lightheaded, her vision thin and tunneling gradually. Her breath was shallow and quick, and the adrenaline supplied from her PAK was noticeably starting to wear off. 

For a brief second she thought that losing consciousness would be the worst thing, and she was wrong.

The cabin came to a lazy, gradual stop as the thrusters whined tiredly. All was quiet, all except for the gentle whirring of the computer terminal in front of her. It had become the only light source in the room. The red emergency lights went dim and died, and if there was any backup power available, it had presumably failed.

Jek blinked in confusion, startled by the sudden loss of power. She turned to the terminal screen for answers, typing one-handedly, every tick of the keyboard somehow louder than the last. It could have been her heightening anxiety, or that space was so unforgivingly silent.

**POWER DEPLETED.**

****

****

**FUEL CAPACITY: 0 %**

Jek slid further down into her seat, lips quivering as a fresh rush of pain and a flush of emotion overwhelmed her. She was never going to get back home. She was never going to get back to Portia. Instead, she would drift endlessly in the planet’s orbit unless someone came to her aid. Pip had no ship to rescue her, and no one traversed this section of space. There was nothing here, nothing but Jek and Portia, and the long, empty distance between them.

She pressed both of her hands to her wound and sobbed a loud, ugly, wet sob. The contraction of her muscles that resulted made her wound ache, but she couldn’t stop it. Tears rolled steadily down her cheeks and dripped off of her chin as she cried from pain, from sadness, from anger, from hatred, for all of the things she wished she had done and wished she could have done. She cried for the soldier that died at the dining table on the transport ship, and Violet, who was burned. She cried for the power station team that she helplessly abandoned, for Nexus and for Tallest Tau. For all of the victims of this ridiculous, dead end mission.

And as if an act of mercy, Jek relaxed, letting out a final sigh as her PAK put her into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep.


	23. Divine Vengence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cypher Six responds to Tallest Zeta's jealous backlash, deciding to fight fire with gasoline.

The sights disgusted him. The ominous shades of pinks, purples and reds blended in sterling whites and silvers: the colors of the Massive, the colors of disease, a single enormous, festering wound that traversed the corners of space. 

Everything Tallest Zeta touched became corrupted. Polluted. Sick, and grotesque beyond measure. She had too long sustained her rule as Tallest, maintaining her throne through frivolous manipulation, and twisted, self-preserving, perverted acts of greed, pride, and other selfish desires. She used others to satisfy herself, eventually tossing them away when they no longer suited her needs. 

He had become one of those individuals: a lesser being in her cold, sapphire eyes. Another stepping stair in her rise to ultimate power. He had spent years catering to her, a slave in his purpose. 

But not without punishment. Not without retribution, an equal, and equivalent exchange.

Cypher Six stepped through the doorway to Zeta’s resting chamber, decked in white, silver, and sapphire hues. He had the pleasure of never having seen it before. Tallest Zeta was considered beautiful by many, being the highest epitome of Irken standards: tall, lean, thin features, and long, curled, fluttering lashes paired with tightly curled antennae.  


Naturally, she surrounded herself with equally beautiful people. 

Standing before her wide, luxurious silver and white bed of a couch was just that: a _very_ beautiful person.

“Oh,” the Irken said, the tightly-strung lines of beads of his headdress swinging with him as he twisted around in the midst of his surprise. His expression suggested he had been startled, his pale complexion dappled with a sunrise of pink across his cheeks. He straightened a strap of silky fabric that fell over a smooth shoulder, glittering a brilliant shade of deep blue.

Six approached him slowly, his feet heavy, disturbing the plush white carpet rug that separated him from the other Irken -- but it wasn’t the only difference. He was an elaborately adorned toy of flesh and being, prized only in his carnal talents and physical beauty. He was Tallest Zeta’s personal outlet of frustration and lust, presumably her favorite for how well dressed and outrageously jeweled he was. 

Between himself and the drone, they were worlds apart. At least, that’s what Six wanted to believe.

Six stood before him, leaning in closely enough to feel the wet heat of the drone’s breath against his lips. The Cypher was taller than him, but not by much. He reached up and cradled the drone’s chin gently in his hand. The beads of his sparkling headdress framed his cheekbones, accentuating their height and thickness. Six ran a cool finger against the other’s jaw line, tracing the delicate architecture of his facial build before tilting his head from right to left, assessing his looks. It was something the drone must have been used to. He didn’t pull back, blush, or show any kind of emotion at all. 

His eyes moved down to his neck and chest, where a diamond-shaped window of pale skin peeked out from beneath his shimmering silk robes. A sapphire brooch clasped a drapery of fabric at his sternum, connecting in two thick, luxurious bands around both of his arms. His waist was tied tightly with a silvery sash, sparkling, and falling about the long length of his legs. The blue hue of the robes melted into a darker shade the closer they came to his jeweled ankles, adorned with anklets set in silver, decorated with sapphires, matching the ones on his wrists.

His hands had followed his gaze, brushing against the drone’s thin form almost admiringly as he circled him slowly, dragging his fingers across the exposed parts of his arms. From the back, Six admired the supple width of his shoulders, and the cinch at his waist that accented the faint protrusion of his hips.  


He was stunning. But a question still clung to Six’s mind:

_What makes him so special?_

Coming back around to face him again, Cypher Six finally met his eyes: turquoise, bright and wide with a hint of uncertainty.  
But their shared gaze did not last long. Six’s attention was quickly diverted to the rest of the room, decorated with items equally as lavish as the pleasure drone: lengthy, elegant furniture all in white, outlined in the same color blue of Zeta’s personal dress; a table made of crystal lined with Irken delicacies plated on silver platters and in silver bowls; and a maze of drawers and dressers undoubtedly outfitted with all of Zeta’s more elaborate pieces to be worn on special occasions, which were rare.  


Six ran his hands along all of it, grazing his touch against all of her belongings. There was plenty more to behold, but the Cypher detested all of it, finding it all so meaningless and wasteful.

He came to a wardrobe and stopped, examining its remarkable quality and craftsmanship. It was undoubtedly of Meekrob origin the way it curved in lengthy waves, and stood on the stumps of curled feet. 

Then suddenly, a light touch brushed the back of his neck, wrapping around to rest lightly against his shoulder. “Did my mistress send you here for me to please you?” the drone breathed, pressing his weight against Six’s back. The drone’s heat was as foreign as it was intoxicating, but different, not at all the body Six was used to. He ran his other hand over Six’s arm, carefully caressing the skin underneath the black fabric of his clothes.  


Cypher Six reached up and gently took the drone’s busy hand, turning to face him as he did so. Their gazes met and were held for several deep moments, before Six finally spoke.

“I will find _plenty_ of pleasure in you.”

The drone’s eyes flashed with a mixture of fear and confusion at Six’s tone. The Cypher reached out and grabbed the drone’s thin neck, curling his fingers tightly around his larynx. The drone gasped sharply as he was thrown aside, landing shakily on his hands and knees. The force of the throw caused his headdress to slouch messily to one side, tangling the beads about his face. 

The drone coughed harshly in wheezing, strained breaths. His gaze was locked with Six’s as Six approached him slowly, his expression mischievous and wry. He circled his prey, thinking of how much more he wanted to toy with him before he made his final move.

Six lazily kicked the drone’s shoulder, knocking him over onto his back, straddling him and taking a seat on his thighs. The drone locked up underneath him, shocked and unsure, but otherwise compliant. Six took the drone’s sash in both hands and ripped it at the seam of his waist all the way down, tearing off a thick piece that he then tore into several thin strips.

While using the remnants of the sash to bind his wrists and ankles, Six caught the drone’s eyes glancing up at the paradise above them: a mirrored ceiling, reflecting their forms back at them. It caught the Cypher off guard and he hesitated, finding himself drawn into the scene.

The drone chuckled lightheartedly, reigning in Six’s attention. Color had bloomed on his cheeks. A small smile tugged at the corner of the drone’s mouth.

“You like playing rough, don’t you?”

_The same shit-eating grin._

He understood now. Zeta preferred this drone to all the other pleasure drones she could have for one simple reason. It wasn’t that she liked his looks more. It wasn’t because he could fuck any better than the rest. It was because he enjoyed it. He thrived in the light of being Zeta’s adored pet. 

The drone undoubtedly admired himself looking up into the mirrored ceiling, watching his performance from the front row. The satisfaction of being a temporary god in the peak of ecstasy undoubtedly fueled the narcissism that had been cultivated in him since his maturity. 

Zeta’s praise had made him feel like that, too. Once. 

But he was enlightened now. Six had been awakened. He was righteous in his purpose. He was going to give the pleasure drone a show he would never forget.

Six picked him up and cradled him, carrying him over to Tallest Zeta’s couch. He tossed him onto it, the drone landing harmlessly onto his back. Six joined him readily, hopping up next to him and looking him over one last time. 

He had to admit, it was a pretty sight. The drone was more enticing in his vulnerability, the way the straps of his robes were crooked and falling from his shoulders, how light green skin peeked out underneath the deep blue edges of the fabric around his bound ankles, the way his gaze was locked on Six, attentive but uncertain -- the Cypher craved sights like these. But the implicit still couldn’t match the aesthetic pleasure of unmasking the grand illusion of allure to reveal its ugly, misshapen truth.

The white sheets draped on the couch were his canvas, anticipating his ideas in the form of a special kind of medium. He was going to paint it with the lightest pinks and the deepest reds, a sunset of all of the beauty and filth his subject had to offer. And once Six was done, he would be even more beautiful than before, more than the drone himself could possibly imagine.

He probed the drone’s mouth, using his fingers as his instrument. He found his slug of a tongue easily as it willingly wound around his digits, slithering over his fingertips. It was a raw sensation: warm, wet, and satisfying.

His subject’s eagerness was endearing. Six couldn’t restrain the smile that tugged at his lips, or the pining hunger that festered deep in his chest, making his heart flutter with excitement.

In an instant, smoke began to rise up from the drone’s mouth, followed by the faint crackling sound of cooking flesh. His icy eyes went wide as his brain caught up to the sensation. He thrashed about underneath Six as he quickly extracted his tongue, burned cleanly and neatly at the base. 

It was strange to see the tongue outside of a body. It was longer than Six had imagined, limp and thick like a dead serpent in his palm. He set it gently aside for later, carefully to placing it behind him on Zeta’s silver couch frame.

Another sharp, harsher, pained wail broke his train of thought. The drone had been noisy and fussy thus far, and the Cypher had no tolerance for anyone taking his satisfaction away from him. He scaled down his body onto his subject’s thighs, using one hand to free him of his glittery sash and the other to pin him down at his throat. It muffled the drone’s cries of torment, silencing them to throaty, gasping wheezes.

The drone’s robes fell open like curtains to a stage. 

Zeta’s Empire had to be purged, drained of its evil, and its filth. And Six did just that, onto his Tallest’s silver platters that now displayed even finer Irken delicacies: a tongue, a heart, six fingers, and a set of genitalia. Everything that she could have found pleasure in was hers to have. His blood was drained into her silver bowls to the point of spilling over, its rich, thick, milky pink pooling all around Six and his subject, trickling down from the sheets and onto the white carpet beneath. 

By the time he had finished, he was covered in the remnants of his work. His suit was stained darker than black -- wet and sticky. It hung closely to his form, sticking against his skin underneath. He dismounted his masterpiece, leaving it dry and in carefully placed pieces, finally perfected in its imperfection. 

Six breathed in deeply, tasting the coppery scent that clung to the air. His mind felt calm, warm. He was at complete inner peace. The release had been euphoric, and his work was without flaw. 

Pleased, the Cypher let out a long, satisfied sigh, and stepped back toward the wall to marvel at his creation. His body felt weightless, and yet heavy at the same time. He rested his PAK against the wardrobe behind him and looked up and around, finally able to admire its features.

Curvy and lithe in its width, magnificent and elegant in its tallness. It was a work of art, no doubt. The top frame was wavy with curled, swirling accents dappled with sterling silver. He gazed up at his warped reflection in the metal for a few long seconds before lowering his head. He took a few steps away from the wardrobe and turned around to face it.

Six leaned in to touch it, but found that his hands were far too dirtied to graze the alluringly natural, snowy white material. It was far too perfect. The way the two doors on either side were set handsomely into place tricked the eye into thinking that they too were curved like the frame. It was all a simple illusion, as they were thoroughly straight. The silver handles that opened it were formed into a sideways “S” shape. Six dared to let the less dirty of his hands graze the metal, finding it to be smooth and cool to the touch. 

It was a grand design. 

But it was _far_ too perfect.

Cypher Six’s expression contorted in his flaring outrage. Zeta didn’t deserve this, either.

In one swift, effortless motion, Six grabbed the second handle with his other hand, and yanked hard. The doors flew open and off of the body of the wardrobe, the four hinges keeping them in place following suit and leaving roughly edged holes in their place. 

As the doors loudly and messily hit the floor on either side behind him, he was met with a pair of bright, spherical pink eyes, watching him from the shadows of Tallest Zeta’s clothes. 

“Stay back!” she warned, recoiling deeper into the wardrobe. She pointed a small dagger at him with her left hand, but her fingers quivered loosely around it. The shine of the blade offset the mood of the room, the glare flashing against the walls and the mirror above them. It reflected back down on Six in a more broad, set cast of light, crossing his face and line of vision.

She was an engineer. At least, that’s what he could tell from the loosely draped uniform across her chest and lap. Her legs and shoulders were bare and exposed, and he guessed that her boots must be elsewhere -- somewhere.

It all made sense now: the drone’s appearance when he had first stepped through, the strap that had fallen over his shoulder, the pinkness of his face. Zeta’s pet had a pet of his own. 

Cypher Six went to take a step forward, and the other Irken growled in protest. She slashed the dagger out at him, marginally missing the blow that had threatened to cut his thighs. Then he took another step purposely, catching her wrist as she lashed out at him again. She was light in his grip and pulled out from the wardrobe easily. But he saw no purpose in being unnecessarily harsh, and brought her toward him only as far as his feet, careful to mind her already reddened knees.

Her pink glare bored into him worse than her little dagger could pierce his flesh. She had revenge on her heart, he knew. But there was fear in her. Her head just slightly turned toward what was left of her drone lover. The backsplatter of darkening pink blood that seeped into the white sheets was enough for her to understand.

Cypher Six gave her wrist a sudden squeeze, and she winced, the dagger dropping from her grasp. The small whoop of it hitting the carpet brought her attention back to him, her eyes full of big, hot, angry tears.

“I know exactly what you’re feeling,” he said quietly, his voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “It happened to me. And it had to happen to _her_.”

The engineer shook her head, pulling hard in an attempt to free herself. Her free hand reached out desperately for her dagger just behind him, the nails on the ends of her fingers clawing desperately at the faintest tufts of carpet and air. 

Six kind of pitied her, but he wasn’t in the mood to entertain. He pressed his boot against her wandering hand, crunching something underneath. She wailed out painfully, gritting her teeth as she only pulled harder and harder, wild in her grief and and dismay. And finally, he let her go.

She fell forward and past him, landing on her elbows and knees. Six lifted his boot from her hand and began to walk away, leaving faint pink outlines behind him. He heard her grunting sobs behind him, but he didn’t care to look back. She needed to be alone, and someone had to take the fall for what he had done.

Six was almost to the massive, towering chamber door when he heard her scream out the angriest, saddest scream beyond his imagination. 

Finally, everything was right again. 

_Pure_ again.


	24. A Blooming Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jek has one last hope in returning to the surface, and Pip opens up to her past.

This was it. Jek could feel it.

Jek hopped up out of the captain’s chair as soon as she woke, zealously pushing the keyboard that had been at her lap aside with such ferocity that it smacked against the back of the terminal. Its mount swung back like a blade ready to cleave Jek in two. It missed her, barely, as she was already on her feet, halfway across the room toward the escape pod.

Well, where it used to be. Beside the hole left in its absence hung three spacesuits on the wall behind a window of glass. Jek opened the casing and grabbed the first one on the left, just as she had done every day before. She was hopeful as she slipped in her legs first, then her arms, and zipped it up the middle with ease, fitting the accompanying helmet on for safe measure. Because, she was sure it would be the last time.

Jek’s injury had taken a lot of energy from her PAK to heal itself. And without any food or drink, there was no way to naturally replenish that energy. On the cabin there was also no way she could charge her PAK artificially, or give it any of the repairs it desperately needed. That said, Jek wore the helmet in the event her PAK’s inborn protective bubble helmet didn’t have the means to activate, and she didn’t want to use any more energy than necessary.

After all, she couldn’t be sure how much she had left.

She had been drifting in Portia’s orbit for what she could best estimate as approximately two weeks, give or take a couple days. An Irken could easily survive as long as she without any outside sources of energy, but the experience definitely played the toll on the body. Jek could feel a difference in her reaction times and muscle movements -- she was slower, and not as precise. Her thoughts either felt jumbled or fogged, or too quick and overwhelming. She already knew reintroducing her body to food was going to be a painful challenge, as welcome as the idea was. 

Giving the suit one last glance-over for any openings and finding herself satisfied, Jek waddled over to the airlock. The suit was dense and heavy. Despite her taller size, it fit a little too large, at least, for Irken standards. 

The airlock was now nothing more than a gaping basin where the escape pod used to set, a black circular dip in the architecture of the room. She stepped down into it, her eyes nervously focused on the hatch underneath her feet. As much time as she had spent in space, Jek never got over her fear of dropping into the vast nothingness of what it was. Spacesuit or not, it unsettled her to the core. 

She breathed in quickly through her nasal pores, then slowly through her mouth, fogging up her helmet for a short moment. She repeated this a few times before catching the courage to reach up for the eject button mounted on the wall, and fell down into the void.

It always ejected her way too quickly to her liking. As she flew backward, Jek flipped the switch in her suit to initiate the metallic hold for her suit’s built-in boots. It triggered a violent reaction of sucking her back toward the ship, as if grabbing her and pulling her feet-first. She landed on the ship successfully, right on the side from which she was ejected above the outside hatch for the escape pod. Jek’s heartbeat was so powerfully audible in her auricles that it startled her. 

Breathing in slowly and deeply seemed to offer no relief -- she was nervous. No -- _excited_. 

After having awakened from her PAK-induced sleep, Jek had plenty of time to think about escaping her situation. With the fuel supply completely depleted, the only power source left on the ship was the power generator. It used solar energy to keep the ship’s computer and life support systems online, a standard in ship technology around a thousand years ago. Most ships these days had evolved further to use solar energy to power its entirety while fuel was used as a backup. But this ship was cheap. Cheap, and old. It was a miracle it used solar energy at all. 

Rather than a curse, Jek took this as an advantage. If she were to reroute the power so that the solar panel fed into the ship’s power core, bypassing the fuel line entirely, she would have a shot at getting to Portia. Solar energy was hardly sustainable without a series of transistors to maximize its power. Perhaps with the parts she could make her own, but being stranded with no supplies didn’t warrant that luxury. Instead, she would have to harvest as much solar energy as the panel could take, and hope she could make it to Portia before the ship ran out of power.

She had shut off the computers and the ship’s lighting days ago, leaving only the shields and the life support running constantly. Within days, the solar panel would be at maximum capacity, but Jek wanted to be extremely sure that it had reached that threshold before she took off. 

She would only get one chance.

The modifications to the ship had taken her nearly every day of the fortnight or so she had spent in Portia’s orbit. And now Jek was in her final stages, making the last adjustments with the recycled fuel line that acted as a conductor from the solar panel to the ship’s fuel cell. 

Working alone underneath the body of the cabin granted her a lot of downtime. It allowed her to think about the events that had happened, and all that had transpired between the beginning of her shift the day she went to Portia up until that very moment. 

The way Dirk behaved on the transport ship had certainly been out of the ordinary, starting with the time that he scolded her for her landing. The reasoning that the Tallest might have been injured made sense then, but not after Dirk locked her, Tallest Tau, and Nexus in the storage room.

The more Jek thought about it the more she considered that because Dirk was a Cypher, what would his purpose be? To feign concern for a Tallest and then killing him later hardly made sense, unless there were special conditions in which it had to be done. But did he plan it himself, or was there a bigger picture? What reason could he possibly have for killing a Tallest, one of the greatest crimes of their race?

Wires sparked between her fingers, violent and hot, flaring up to kiss her helmet. They bounced back off and fell onto the arms of her suit like ashes. Jek gritted her teeth bitterly, frustration building in her stomach as she wound them together, and began to solder them.

Her mind wandered. Jek thought that she and Dirk loved each other. That changed when he disregarded her life after she opposed him, crashing her, and highjacking the transport ship. Whatever plan Dirk might have had, it was more important to him than their relationship, her life, and their Empire.

Jek’s breath got heavier the more she thought about it, fogging up the inner part of her helmet faster than the circulation could catch the respiration. How could she have been so stupid? How could she not have seen the monster that Dirk was, as much time as they spent together, as many times as they had made love?

The wires finally soldered in place and the fuse closed, she cranked her wrench hard, locking in place the rerouted fuel line from the life support to the ship’s fuel cell. If she were going to land on Portia within ten minutes of cutting off the support, her PAK should have no trouble sustaining her. She hoped.

Then she would have to find Pip, which wouldn’t be too hard. Even from space the crevice that cracked the planet was visible -- that jagged, black abyss that stretched across the planet like a crooked, evil smile. If she followed that crevice, she would find Pip eventually.

Either that, or Pip’s pets would find her first.

Jek didn’t understand the connection between Pip and the aliens. Despite all of Pip’s methods of controlling them and her fondness for their honest, but deadly nature, Jek sensed that Pip’s relationship with them was… complicated.

There was a sadness that lingered with Pip, behind her eyes and with every word she spoke. Jek didn’t like making any loose assumptions, but she knew that somewhere, something happened to her. Someone or something forced her to Portia, and left her abandoned.

Jek bit her lip with a sudden realization:

 _What is she thinks_ I _abandoned her?_

Jek cranked her wrench again, and the cabin purred with a low, whispering _whirr_. 

“Yes!” she cried, pumping her fist happily as tufts of steam puffed and blew around her. The ship was responding positively to the pressure change, a sure sign of something good about to happen.

She gave one last glance-over at the connections she made. They were knotted and ugly, but tight and functional. That’s all that mattered. She was leaving. She was going -- 

_Home._

Home? She blinked. Was the lab her home? Portia surely wasn’t. 

Jek found herself biting her lip, running her tongue across it in thought. She more she tasted herself, metallic and dry, the more she wished it tasted… sweet. Dark. Earthy, and black. Bitter.

Like coffee.

Like...

Jek’s guts flip-flopped. She really must not be feeling well. 

The sooner she could leave, the better. Jek stepped herself up from the underside of the ship, pulling herself up along its broken, rusted side with the help of her PAK’s limbs. She climbed back up to the escape pod’s hatch and hit the override on the outside, opening the ship back up to her. 

She didn’t bother stripping off the suit and started running, flinging herself into the captain’s chair. She grabbed the keyboard and started up the computer again, bringing up her predetermined trajectory aimed right for the side of the crevice, with a few thousand units to spare in case the ship lead her off-course. It would undoubtedly be the roughest landing of her life: no landing pad, no surity of what lay in her path. Portia was one huge, rocky, volcanic pangea separated by cracks that may have carried rivers of water at one time, but had long turned into thin streams of acid. Any flight or landing malfunction could kill her before the cabin had a chance to.

The diagnostics showed the ship had full power -- for now. The shields, thrusters, engine, and all vitals were operational, and Jek wasted no time. She snapped the acceleration lever back toward her knee. The ship moaned beneath her feet, steady and shallow, a beautiful, glorious sound. Above her she flipped the flashing thruster switches, and reached over to her left, pulling a seatbelt over her lap. Instinctively she reached up for a headset that was no longer there, her fingertips brushing futilely against the bulb of the helmet that surrounded her.

Finally she locked the engine knob into place, and the ship roared with life. The lights flickered on, bright and white, the illumination almost as stunning as a sun. Jek squinted through her discomfort and revved the cabin, thrusting it toward Portia as fast as she could, leaving a trail of smoke behind her.

  


***

  


_“You’ve been taking trips without me? Talking with strangers at night, people I don’t know? What else aren’t you telling me, Garr?”_

_“Calm down, Tia. I want you to understand --”_

_“Is this about the business? I thought you were finished working for those_ sleemos _.”_

 _“No. This is about us. This is about me_ loving _you --”_

Pip groaned and looked away from her terminal’s screen, finding herself unable to concentrate. She rubbed her temples with her bare fingers, missing the wires of her transmitter without a thought as she did so. She had had a headache for what felt like days, but could have easily been hours. Time no longer seemed to pass in her laboratory.

She was falling into another one of her “slumps” again. 

Pip had dealt with “slumps” her entire life. Those several-week-long depressions that drained her of interest and energy, leaving her only with fatigue, sadness, and desperation to become inspired again. Eventually the time would come where she felt better again, but Pip could never tell how long her slump would last. She dreaded their oncoming presences. She often felt it before they did. But this time, it came on suddenly.

Sometimes her slumps were without reason. This slump was not. Losing Jek had been ruinous, and her only way to cope was watching old re-runs of trashy space operas and eating herself into mentally sedated, emotionally numb sugar comas. 

She brushed the cookie and pretzel crumbs off of her shirt and she stood, looking groggily around the room before stepping barefoot through the door of her personal room into the lab. In the lab’s center was the deconstructed electromagnetic null zone, a messy pile of scrap metal and glass now. The datapad and datastick she and Jek were working on was now idle on a nearby lab bench, untouched and disregarded. 

If this Dirk was a threat, he was either a really pathetic one or a patient one. The datastick had contained nothing. It was the worst outcome of all their trouble, after days of working and hoping for some sort of clue, some kind of understanding, or even a moment of closure. 

There was none to offer. Now Jek was gone, and Pip couldn’t decide whether it was best to believe that she had either deserted her or if she had died. Both were equally painful in different ways. The way they had met and the way they had parted only aided her internal agony. 

Pip found Jek half-dead and burning. She happened to be at the right place at the right time in search of someone else. That someone else had been Cypher Five. Or, at least, whoever she was masquerading herself as this time.

But the way they had parted -- _oh._ Pip could still feel it. The way Jek had guided her, then grabbed her, and kissed her in the most ruthless, merciless way possible. It was as if Jek knew all of her weaknesses, the very parts of her that when touched made her bend at the knees, a sensation that at the time she had been willing to die for if it meant that she wouldn’t die alone.

But Pip was alone. Again. 

She sighed, leaning up against the wall. It felt so cold. She wanted nothing more than to turn around and go back into her room, curl up on her couch, and wait. She might even try sleeping again. Hell, she could read her trashy novels for the maybe hundredth -- no -- the _thousandth_ time. 

But if she did, nothing would change. Pip would continue her cycle, over and over again. Who knew how long this slump would last, how much longer she would have to endure this crippling numbness, how many more she would have.

She had to let go.

The thought made her rub her arms uncomfortably, her eyes downcast in her consideration. Did letting go mean forgetting? Did it mean that nothing ever mattered? Was healing too painful, too selfish for her circumstance?

Pip made her way into the storage room, by the chair she had thrown her lab coat over a couple weeks prior. She grabbed it in passing, slipping it over her head as she hit the button to open the storage room door. The air inside was stagnant, smelling faintly of its dusty contents. 

It was still a mess where Jek had been rummaging through it, supposedly looking for propane canisters and pieces to make the flamethrower she had. There were many old weapons kept in the storage room, just old pistols and rifles she once owned when she was a different person. A worse person.

Amongst the weapons and gas canisters were old or dirty, stained glassware, broken lab equipment Pip long vowed to fix but never did, and a few dusty, old computer terminals that had degraded from time and overuse. But beyond all of that, hidden and kept away, was something very, very precious to her.

Her stash.

She was lucky Jek hadn’t looked hard enough to find it: a small, black crate set behind a few other, larger storage crates containing more of Cypher Two’s old clothes. Pip ended up with them after he decided that their partnership was no longer useful. He always was the kind of person to have too many clothes, given his ravenous love and skill of playing dress-up. His things had mixed with hers accidentally, and she was more than certain he ended up with some of her things, too. Luckily it was nothing Pip could remember, deeming it unimportant. 

It was his clothes that had actually fit Jek. They were a little too short and slightly too wide for her frame, but it served its purpose. 

Pip moved the crate aside and picked up her stash, lifting it with a mild struggle and carrying over to the open space of the room. She was becoming steadily out of shape, and her two-week-long binge of snack foods and coffee had not helped the matter at all. 

She set it down with a dull thud, folding her legs inward as she sat down next to it. She stared down, and its lid glared back up at her. On the outside of the lid was an engraving, an isosceles triangle with the two longest sides bolded and thickened to accentuate a “V” shape: the insignia of the Cyphers. The two pillars of power and order bent, joined by the foundation of secrecy -- or so, she was taught. 

The crate had been given to her as a gift from Cypher Six long ago. He was a lover of puzzles, and claimed to have constructed it himself. Although she grew to thoroughly hate him, she kept the crate, as it was already full of sentimental momentos she had accumulated throughout her lifetime, but mostly during her time on Vort.

_Vort._

Her best mission. And her worst.

It was there that her life changed forever. She had learned about love, how to love, and be loved in return, how to believe, and what hope felt like. But she also learned about betrayal, the inevitable darkness that was doomed to follow her, the darkness handed to her from ghosts of a past that wasn’t even hers. Pip had long ago been given the world, and asked to support it on her shoulders. The burden wasn’t hers to bear, and she couldn’t do it anymore.

Pip traced her two index fingers over the “V” shape, starting from the top and going down. Her fingertips met as she rounded the bottommost angles and came to the center of the third, shortest line. The crate glowed a deep violet, hissing from its sudden depressurization, long overdue. Behind the “V” was a disk that she turned counterclockwise until there was a faint _click._

Three cylinders popped out from each point of the “V”, two on top, and one on the bottom. She pressed them in one at a time, starting from the uppermost right, then the left, and then the bottom one. The lid came loose. 

Pip’s hands felt heavy on the lid. She couldn’t go back on this now. 

She lifted it up and away, removing the last physical barrier between her and her past. Pip was greeted with a sparkle, a sliver of a amethyst set in silver.

“Persephone.”

Pip picked up the locket delicately, letting it shine in the artificial light. It was a thumb-sized amethyst nestled deep into a silver flower, a lotus -- Persephone’s favorite, and the symbol of her household.

She had been a princess, and Pip had been in so much love. Persephone was heir to the Voritan royal throne, a long-dead tradition that existed in the underground of their society, so deeply embedded that the Irken occupation could not begin to touch it. 

“I’ve carried you in my heart since the day you died,” she cried, pressing the emblem to her chest, cold, and unfeeling. Her fingers curled around the locket, her fingers intertwined with its silver chain, tight and wanting. “But you’ve grown so heavy, and I can’t carry you anymore.”

Pip stood up, dropping the locket at her feet. She looked down at it, hesitating. 

“I need to keep moving.”

Just as the shadow of her foot crossed over the jewelry, a siren began to wail, long, and loud, high and piercing. Pip jumped to her feet, heart racing; her sensors had detected something. Something with an electromagnetic signal so strong, it had set it off.

_A ship?_

She wasted no time, and sprinted into her room to grab her boots. There was no time to close her stash, no time to turn off her monitors, hide or secure anything. Whatever it was, for the siren to be going off meant it was in close proximity. 

Time and idle circumstance had made her careless. 

Pip ran as fast as she could out of her lab, and into the dark tunnels beyond, passing ancient murals of the past. She tried to mentally ready herself for what lay waiting for her aboveground.

A ship -- could it be Tallest Zeta, finally here to keep her promise? Or perhaps her worst enemy: Cypher Six? Maybe it was more trouble. Maybe it was help. She couldn’t know. And for whatever it could be, whatever it might have been, Pip wouldn’t be prepared. She never was.

She smelled the smoke long before she saw it. Thick and black, pooling from its flaming source, and stretching out over the rocky horizon. The smoke masked even the tallest pillars of rock. It burned her eyes for only a moment before her bubble helmet protected her from the sting and the fumes. She had to blink a few times just to see again, and when she did, she thought she was dreaming.

Out of the curtain of smoke came a single flame, separating itself from the rest of the wreckage. Fiery arms raised up to remove the faintest glimmer of a helmet. Then it shed its burning skin, tossing it to the ground. Through the smoke formed a thin silhouette, and it was quickly moving toward her.

“Jek!”

Pip couldn’t control herself. She ran for her as fast as her short, thick legs could carry her. Never before had she wanted someone more, needed to feel someone more. She’s had too many close calls, lost too many friends and loved ones. She’s watched too many people disappear, and disappear for good. Pip thought Jek would be one of them, another face burned into her memory, another regret, another reminder of her helplessness. 

Somewhere in the middle, they collided. Dust kicked up around them as they both lost their footing and fell, Pip falling forward and Jek falling back. Pip wrapped her arms around Jek’s waist, burying her face into her stomach. She took her in, the sour, metallic scent of sweat and dried blood, the feeling of Jek’s body underneath her clothes. The sound of her breathing was labored, yet soft.

Pip slowly pulled back, her arms unwinding from Jek’s waist. She pressed herself up on her hands to meet Jek’s eyes, wet and wide. There was a sallowness to her features that hadn’t been there before, filled in only with several layers of sweat, dirt, and grime that smeared with the tears that left trails of color that somewhat resembled the natural color of her skin.

Jek wiped her face with the back of her hand, her glove torn around the edges and hardly fitting her anymore. Pip frowned, averting her gaze, suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of guilt. All this time she had been selfishly gorging herself comfortably alone, dwelling on her feelings rather than taking action, while Jek had been experiencing something she could not begin to understand. The fear she must have felt, the loneliness, the hunger -- 

Suddenly, a hand pressed against Pip’s cheek. Jek turned her head to face her, biting her quivering lower lip. She pulled Pip forward, guiding her from the small of her back, and pressed her down onto her chest. Her arms wrapped around her shoulders tightly, bringing her close.

“Pip,” Jek cried, breaking their silence. “I’m so sorry.”

“What?” Pip’s eyes flashed with a ripple of disbelief. She pushed herself up and out of Jek’s embrace, her brow bent sharply. “I’m the one at fault! This whole time, I --”

Jek interrupted her, her body shaking beneath Pip’s own. Her voice was quiet, a mixture between a whisper and a sob. “I kissed you without permission, and pushed you into that escape pod. You probably thought I left you here, this whole time. When I was stuck on the ship, I watched the days pass here. I thought about how you must be feeling lost and alone,” she cried. “It broke my heart.”

While Pip was thinking only of herself, Jek was thinking about her, despite her bloodstain, despite her thinning body, despite everything she had been through. Pip opened her mouth to speak, drawing a single breath only to let it go. She had never been very good with words, and she had never been sorry. 

“Never worry what other people think of you, because no one ever thinks of you.”

Jek said nothing, her expression confused.

“It’s a quote from some silly book I read,” Pip said, gently pushing herself off of Jek. She sat down on the rocky ground beside her, crossing her legs. “I once took that quote to heart, and believed it to be true. I thought that no one ever thinks of anybody but themselves, like it was the natural thing to do. But,” she confessed, her fingers twirling around the wires of her transmitter nervously, “you keep continuing to prove me wrong, Jek. On so many things.”

Jek sat up next to Pip, leaning on her slightly. Pip looked away shyly, rubbing her arms to relieve some of her inner tension. An arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her in again. Pip blinked up to Jek. Even with her eyes still full of tears, she was smiling.

She didn’t deserve her kindness. She had no idea what kind of person she was. 

Pip sniffed, her eyelashes fluttering as emotion began to overwhelm her. She found herself holding back tears and wiped her eyes on the edges of her lab coat sleeves, now dirtied and dusted with smoke and rock. 

Jek must have taken notice. She gave Pip a small tug, and a comforting glance. 

“I’m not crying,” Pip muttered, suddenly defensive. “You just… smell really, _really_ bad."

Jek laughed and pulled Pip closer, drowning her in the difference of their statures. Pip sighed loudly in exaggerated protest, and allowed Jek to hold her. After all she had been through, she guessed she could spare the feigned discomfort for just a little longer.


	25. In Beta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet finds herself in a strange new place, and must return to an old one.

Darkness. A world of dreamless nightmares. The taste of blood. They plagued her, torturing her in her sleep. Her body was helpless to move, yet she could feel the heavy layer of cloth against her skin. There was a faint waft of air that brushed her cheek. And then… there was light.

_Light._

Light meant she was still alive.

Violet’s eyes blinked slowly awake for the first time in what felt like --

Weeks? Months? _Years?_

Probably not years. But it had been a long damn time.

She was slightly elevated, supported by the pillows behind her head and lower back, covered in thick, warm blankets. Something around her ankles pulsed gently along with a faint hiss and a puff as they inflated and shrunk back down again.Violet moved her fingers beneath her sheets, one by one. All six flexed. Then, her toes.

She stared up at the ceiling for several long moments, wiggling her digits, slowly waking her body up. Her mind was sluggish, but she tried recalling the last thing she remembered before this room. It was all so hazy: the transport ship, Alpha and Omega’s deaths, her burn, the skinny, big-eyed girl in the vent --

And that horrible, ugly pair of green eyes.

Violet’s jaw clenched. She turned her head, and met the lifeless eyes of another Irken on a gurney next to her.

_Libby._

Fear was the only thing that kept her in her bed. Her entire body felt hot with a sudden shock, radiating from the top of her head and cascading downward, pooling at her stomach.

Her breathing quickened. Violet’s hands curled around the blankets from underneath them, pulling them tighter.

That's right -- _Libby_. She was the last thing she remembered. Violet had tried freeing her on the Massive, and Libby bit her in response. She remembered her yelling, screaming, crying, about something… something _inside_ them.

Violet gasped loudly, the feeling of shortness of breath suddenly overwhelming her. Eyes wide, she pushed herself up in her bed fearfully, desperate to draw a solid breath. But her body refused, her heart pounding, her chest tightening, constricting her lungs and her throat, as if she were drowning without water.

She flipped off her covers, leaning toward her toes, and ripped off her ankle cuffs. Violet felt like she had to run, but where would she go? How could she get there, like --

Her feet hit the ground and her knees buckled. She fell forward, catching herself on her hands and knees.

_Like this._

Violet was weak, and she was in agony. Sweating hard, she pushed her weight against her knees, her hands clutching at the chest of the gown she wore. Her chest was so tight. It ached a dull, crushing ache, as if her heart was going to explode, her lungs would collapse. As if --

_My chest is going to burst._

She heard something beside of her, the dullness of a faint, quiet footstep. Violet turned around quickly, meeting the crimson eye of another Irken, and a shimmer of silver of a needle. 

It hit her right in the chest, through her gown. She drew a deep, gaping breath, the sting of the needle paired with the heavy pain in her chest igniting her instinct to stave off death, even for a moment more.

She shoved her attacker away, pushing him with all the strength she had left. He lost his footing and fell backward into Libby’s gurney, which rolled in the same direction in response, causing the other Irken to land painfully onto his PAK. His syringe and needle went with him.

Violet lurched forward, fist drawn, ready to go at him a second time when she realized: she was breathing. Her chest felt sore, but her pain had subsided. She pressed her hands against herself, touching her pressure points with a mixture of suspicion and amazement. 

“What did you do to me?” she demanded. 

The stranger pushed himself up into a sitting position, rubbing the side of his head. It was his mechanical eye that met her gaze first, a faintly glowing red orb that resided in his right socket. It whirled around a few times before focusing in on her, its fabricated iris constricting as it did so. Then he turned, revealing the roughness of his features that hinted his old age as both of his eyes settled on her. Then, he smiled.

“I saved your life,” he said, “and I can do it again. But that’s up to you.”

Violet’s eyes narrowed, her antennae flicking past him. “Did Libby have a choice?”

“Oh, no,” he admitted, grabbing onto Libby’s gurney to get himself back on his feet. He patted down his white uniform, the standard for all scientists. “And you didn’t either, until now.” 

“Explain yourself,” Violet growled, doing more than matching his height when she stood, even from a distance. She closed the space between them, approaching the stranger with the same kind of swagger that got Alpha killed. “If you don’t,” she said, nodding her head toward the syringe in his hand, “I’ll gladly take your other eye.”

“I wouldn’t mind having another artificial eye.” He shrugged, outwardly unphased. “It couldn’t hurt much worse the second time, could it? Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said, pushing past her, “I have more work to do.”

 _Tch._

“Work?” Violet repeated, turning to follow him. “Like what? Killing your own kind? Murdering innocents?”

The stranger approached the silver slab of a steel operating table, and grabbed a pair of gloves that lay neatly atop it. Around his neck was a facial mask, which he pulled over his face, letting it rest just beneath his eyes. 

He laughed. “Miss, I have no idea where you’re getting your accusations from, but you’re wrong,” he said, turning to face Violet as she came up beside of him. “I only create. I do not destroy.”

“Then,” she began to argue, her voice deep and loud, “why --”

The stranger hit a button on the side of the operating table. Beside them it hummed smoothly -- the kind of sound Violet recognized as a hydraulic lift. She watched the table in anticipation, her wide eyes growing narrower with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. 

An Irken body slowly ascended to reveal itself, lying strangely flat on its back, ankles and wrists bound by two pairs of surgical cuffs. They were naked aside from a sheet that covered their groin, their skin clean, and completely unblemished. Violet almost recognized them, but she wasn’t sure if it was simply her distorted memories toying with her or not.

“You’ll need this,” the stranger said, offering Violet a facial mask. 

She didn’t understand.

His PAK arms extended from his shoulders readily, a glimmer of a scalpel glistening on one, and a small saw on the other. Violet braced herself, pulling the facial mask around her neck, then up to her face. 

She wished she had understood a moment earlier.

The Irken drew a short, choked breath, and they began to tremble. The need for the cuffs became actualized, as they would have easily fallen off the table from the moment their symptoms began. Yet their eyes stayed closed, their expression unnaturally unchanged by the physical sensations plaguing them.

Violet clutched her chest knowingly, feeling the fear rising in her stomach again as she was unable to tear herself from the scene. The stranger’s PAK arms descended onto the other Irken’s chest, making a quick, but perfectly straight line down the center. Pink blood bubbled up around the incision, and then, as if their heart had beaten it all up to the surface, it poured, running down their sides and pooling underneath them. 

Something under their skin pulsed, like a quick, sudden breath, but too irregular and unnatural to be so. Their ribs pressiled up tight underneath, bulging outward. Violet found herself making a fist over her heart, her nails digging into her gown and balling it up in a vain search for ease.

The stranger’s second set of PAK arms exited his ribs and hooked themselves against the two folds of skin made by his cut. He pulled the skin apart, revealing the Irken’s ribcage. Something beneath their bones pulsed again, then again, stretching them to their limit -- it was faster and more violent than before. They were still shaking uncontrollably, pulling on their restraints so hard that Violet wondered if they would indeed come off, despite being bolted to the table. 

The saw touched them next, severing the sternum that rested in the ribcage’s center. It was as if the stranger had opened the gates to hell itself.

Violet had seen war. She had killed, and had watched people die -- some she had loved, others she had hated. But none of these experiences compared to the horror she witnessed then.

Not a single one.

A vacuum with a wide cylindrical head descended from the ceiling, sticking itself onto the Irken’s chest just in time. Blood erupted within it, and a small, tan head popped out, its hard body glittering in the remnants of its host. Violet stumbled backward out of fright, the moment of Omega’s death playing itself in her mind, over, and over, and over --

She reached up suddenly for her face, covering herself with her scarred, bare arms. Her eyes shut tight, bracing herself for the onslaught of fire that threatened to douse her. 

“Don’t worry, miss,” the stranger said, the air capturing his movements, wafting a small breeze back toward Violet as he moved away. “The creature is completely contained. It can’t harm you.”

“Can’t _harm_ me?” she barked back, her eyes following him as he went to some kind of containment capsule nearby. Violet’s lips trembled, the skin beneath her scars prickling. “Dude, have you seen my _face?_ My _body?_ ”

He pulled a lever beside the pill-shaped capsule, and the creature screeched. It was flash-frozen instantly, its mouth still caught in its angry, open position. Violet couldn’t see his face, but the scientist didn’t seem to show any emotion as he caused the creature pain. Frankly, she couldn’t feel anything for it either.

“Of course, if you pierce its skin somehow,” he replied finally, peeling off his gloves as he turned back to her. “But only a fool would do that.”

“You’re sick,” Violet growled, deliberately averting her gaze from the body that still lay in front of her. She turned all around, searching for a door. There was one just past him, shadowed against the bright lights of the operating table. She made a break for it, finding it to be a button-activated door. Violet pressed against the exit button with the side of her fist, but to no avail. 

She was starting to panic, sweat dappling her brow, her legs weak and shaking. She banged on the viewport of the door, rattling the reinforced glass that kept her from her freedom of the outside. 

“That isn’t going to work, dear --”

Violet’s PAK arms extended, equipped with her ray guns. She stood back and fired at the door repeatedly, bombarding the thick metal and glass with as many rounds as her PAK could offer. Over and over again, the lab rattled, her assault sending out a series vicious booms all throughout the room. 

Emptied and the smoke cleared, she saw that she had made very little impact on the door: just a few dents, and no broken glass. She growled in frustration, curling her hands back into tense, tight fists.

“You’ll need a key to get out,” the stranger called out to her. He was taking a towel to his instruments, pulling the limbs of his PAK toward him one by one, and polishing them to shimmering perfection. “It’s hanging up beside of the door, on the left.”

Violet swerved to the left, eyeing a keycard that hung on the wall right in front of her. She grabbed it quickly, finding the slot, and shoved it in --

“Are you sure you really want to leave?”

“What?” she snarled, baring her teeth as she spoke. “You think an old man like you is gonna stop me?”

“Not me,” he said, shaking his head. “But the creature inside you will.”

The light above the door flashed green, and opened up before her, but Violet didn’t step through. 

“The pain you experienced earlier was the result of the creature attempting to exit your body,” he explained, his voice calm as he approached her again. “What I injected you with will sedate it for awhile, but not forever.”

“So, Libby was right,” Violet muttered, pressing her fist against her chest. “She wasn’t crazy. No one believed her.”

There was a moment of silence between them. It was abruptly interrupted by the soft sound of the door reclosing, the light above it blinking back to red.

“Take it out of me,” Violet begged, grabbing his shoulders. She gripped him furiously, her nails boring into him. “ _Now._ ”

Once again, he shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “My assistant can, though, if you retrieve her for me.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” she yelled, giving him a rough shake. “You’ve got all this lab equipment, those things in your PAK!”

“My assistant can perform the procedure for you," he said again.

Violet blinked, her eyes narrowing knowingly. “So it’s not that you can’t. You _won’t,_ ” she hissed, digging her fingers into his thin, aged muscles. “You’re screwing me over to get what you want.”

“There was a misprint in the shipment invoice I was given,” he told her, bringing up a digital image of it through a projection of his mechanical eye. It hovered above both of their heads in a dim, pixelated, crimson glow. “I was only meant to receive twelve subjects, but including you, I received thirteen.” He shrugged, despite her grip on him. “It was the perfect opportunity.”

“You mean to tell me that you put this… _monster_ inside of me just to manipulate me into playing knight for you?”

“You were already inoculated when you came,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

“Then who did?”

“Tallest Zeta, of course.”

“That’s absurd,” Violet said. “And treasonous.”

The stranger shrugged with a short, coughing kind of laugh. “What do you think all this was, exactly?” he asked. “An unfortunate accident? A tragic happenstance?”

Violet’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe not, but the Tallest wouldn’t do something like this. She --”

“What?” he interrupted with a dark, slight chuckle. “You think because she is Tallest that she is incapable of evil?”

When she didn’t reply, he turned away, walking past Violet to toward the door. He retrieved a keyring from the wall, next to where his keycard had been. He held it up to her in offering.

“This is to the purple ship in the main docking station of this building,” he explained. “The ship has pre-routed coordinates. All you will have to do is hop in, initiate its autopiloting system, and it will take you where you need to go.”

Violet scowled, her lips pursed in suspicion. “And where would that be?”

“Portia, of course.”

“Oh, _hell no,_ ” she snapped, shaking her head and pulling back from him. “I'm _not_ going back there. There’s nothing on that planet. Our team found nothing but an old base and a power station. If your assistant was there, she’s been long dead. Only us thirteen survived.” Her frown deepened. “Well, us, and that thing disguised as a person.” 

“Oh?” His brows raised with intrigue. “Could you be talking about Cypher Six?”

“I don’t know what that is, dude,” Violet sighed, exasperated. She put her hands to her temples, giving them a quick, hard massage, groaning in frustration. “I want to get this thing out of me, alright? I’m just saying your assistant is dead as dead gets. If she wasn’t part of your little shipment of Irken toys, she didn’t make it.”

“Not true,” he objected. “She has a laboratory there. But be careful,” he warned, pointing to his mechanical eye. “The last time that I spoke with her, she gave me _this._ ”

Beta frowned. “You’re insane.”

“But do you want the creature out of you or not?” he reiterated, pointing to her chest. 

Violet cursed under her breath and took the keys, swiping them out of his outstretched hand. “Whatever,” she said. “I’ll do it. But I need two things first.”

“Great!” He clapped his hands together happily, nodding. “What are your two conditions?”

“I need some clothes,” she said, “and I need to know who you are.”

He smiled again in his creepy way, and put his hands on his hips, in almost a just as creepy kind of way. “I am Fabius,” he said, holding out his right hand. “And I will find you some clothes… er…”

“Beta,” she answered after a moment’s deliberation, getting the gist of his gesture. “But I’m not shaking your hand.”

Fabius laughed genuinely. Either that, or he really was as crazy as she thought. “Alright then, Beta.” He smiled. “Let’s find you something to wear.”


	26. Layover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet, newly dubbing herself as Beta, runs into some complications with her ship and has to refuel at an unfamiliar place.

The ship wasn’t what she was expecting. With deep, rich purple in color, with a black and chrome interior, it was also far from military-grade. Outfitted with five separate rooms for rest and relaxation, a small kitchen, and a shower room, it was astonishingly luxurious. All of the seats, cushions and couches were fine black Shloonktapooxis leather, seemingly untouched by any measure of age or use. 

Beta could only assume a ship like this could belong to someone of importance, someone with power, and seemingly loaded with resources. And, it was impossible that that person was Fabius. He was too strange, too… _unfashionable._

She rested in the captain’s seat, the blue-white hue of the ship’s computer screen negating the light violet of her eyes as she glared down at it, met with an unwelcome message.

“Low on fuel?” she muttered, sputtering her words in anger. “ _How?_ ”

 _That old man didn’t even give me a full tank,_ she thought, grinding her teeth as her left hand was already on the deaccelerator, dropping herself slowly out of warp. The ship shuddered at the suddenness of her decision, the mechanics below her feet giving a grunting _whomp_ and a low, silky _whirr._

_Bastard._

“Computer, set me on course for the nearest fueling station,” she commanded, flipping the switches above her to lower the power in the cabin to conserve more of what she had left. The space around her went dark, the ship illuminated only by faint indigo and green lights flickering and flashing in tandem, with repetitious purpose. What purpose though, she hadn’t figured that out yet.

The computer set a course to a nearby asteroid. From what Beta could tell, it was the only fueling station for a few light years, as well as the closest one to the planet Portia -- which was still objectively a very, _very_ long way away. 

When she got there, where would she look? She wondered, as the transport ship’s scanners couldn’t find whatever laboratory Fabius had been talking about. Maybe he meant the base, where she and her team had found survivors. If that was true, his assistant was as good as dead.

Then, Beta remembered his face: slightly scarred and faintly disfigured, his mechanical eye whirling around and around as it searched for something to focus on, and his kinked, damaged antennae. If she had hurt him, why did he want her to be found?

Nothing made sense to her. For all she knew, it could be all one, huge lie. But Beta would do anything to abort the creature growing inside of her, even if she had to do it herself.

As the ship approached the asteroid, it became clear just how out of the way and miniscule it was. The asteroid was hardly as large as most Irken cities in size, a small, dark brown ball floating in space amongst several small, uninhabitable rocks. 

The sun shone on only one side of the asteroid, leaving the other side devoid of any natural light, the only gleam of existence were pockets of dappled civilization there, glowing softly against the darkness in varying bright shades of color. 

Then she saw it: the beautiful, green glow of a fuel station in all of its glory, a saucer-shaped icon and all. Beta made her landing smoothly, despite not being met by an air controller, or even a valet of some sort. Any ameteur pilot could have easily toppled the entire place, but an ameteur would hardly be out in such rough space. Probably.

“Need ta fill ‘er up?”

The voice of the Screwhead mechanic caught her off-guard. She twisted around to meet them, a tiny individual in a heavily-dirtied, green mechanics uniform. Their jaw seemed to clench at the sight of her, but she hardly paid attention to it.

“Yeah, definitely,” she said, patting her hand on the bumper end of the ship. “The tank is on the left side.”

The mechanic blinked upward, their brow brought together in a wrinkly clump at the center of their forehead. “This is a pretty, um --” they stammered, trying to find the words. “This ship is yours?”

“I’m flying it, aren’t I?” Beta rolled her eyes, already growing impatient. There was a slight twinge in her chest that could have been a muscle spasm, a fluttering heartbeat. Or something else. “Look, I’m kind of in a hurry.”

The Screwhead said nothing outwardly, but still grumbled under their breath as they went to the rear of the ship and opened the refueling hatch. They stood there for a moment before crouching down low, cocking their head underneath the fuel cell. 

“What is it?” Beta called out to them, craning her neck around to the backside of the ship. 

“Had a full tank when you left, didn’t ya?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” she said, coming around the ship to meet them. “Why?”

The Screwhead popped their head from underneath the ship, holding a hose in their gloved hand. “Fuel hose is all dried up and cracked,” they replied, running their thumb over the dry-rotted rubber. “Just somethin’ that happens when the hose gets old, or it isn’t used so much.”

Beta crossed her arms, even more irritated than before. She really was about to take Fabius’ other eye. “Is it fixable?”

The Screwhead chuckled. “Of course, missy,” they said, crawling back out from the ship and getting to their feet. “It don’t even cost that much. An easy fix.”

“Wonderful. Fix it, then.”

“It’ll be quite a bit until I can get it done,” they said. “I’ve gotta get a hose to fit this thing, and that involves a little lookin’ around. Plus, I can’t do it alone. I’ll have to call someone else in to help me.”

Beta felt herself imploding with rage. She gritted her teeth in frustration, digging her nails into the jacket she wore. She felt the twinge in her chest again, and that was enough to convince her to try to relax. The creature seemed to be stirred by emotional cues, and she wasn’t about to encourage it any more than she already had. 

“Alright,” she said finally, with a heavy exhale through her nasal pores. “Where should I wait in the meantime?”

“Well, you can either stay here or go on over to the cantina over there.” The mechanic pointed over Beta’s shoulder toward a faintly lit building hardly half a unit away. “They’ve got food if you’re hungry, and drink if you’re into that kinda thing.”

Come to think of it, Beta was hungry. In fact, she was _starving_. Her crossed arms wrapped tighter around her, pressed against her stomach as it gave a low, thundering growl.

“I’ll come find ya when I’m done,” the Screwhead said. “Just don’t spend all your money gamblin’ and what not.” They smiled. “I won’t let you leave without payin’ me.”

Beta made her way over to the cantina, nothing but a glorified shed of scrap metal harshly lit an obnoxiously deep, pinkish-red. She stopped there at three-set of steps leading up to the dented door, her eyes focused up above her. She groaned.

_Ass Pimple._

The original sign had been crudely vandalized, slabs of scrap piled over and over where previous letters had been, paint slabbed over and over in a struggle to maintain whatever the original title must have been. 

But for now, it was Ass Pimple.

She opened the door and stepped inside. It shut behind her with a loud _thwack_ , the hinges to it severely rusted and loose. When Beta turned to face the inside of the bar, she met the eyes of several groups of strangers. Some turned their heads to say something to another person at the table. Others blinked away, and some didn’t seem to notice her presence at all.

It was a rugged scene. Dusty, dirty and weathered, the interior matched the exterior perfectly. The inside was small and cramped, the tables made out of the same kind of scrap metal as the building itself. The bar area was constructed with a thicker metal material, dejectedly reminiscent to a piece of a downed ship of a sort. 

Beta found a small, empty table in the corner of the cantina. As she sat down, the table wobbled with her weight, nearly denting it and flipping it over on its side. She readjusted it, and sat back down. If she weren’t so hungry, she would undoubtedly leave.

She sat there for several minutes, eyeing the others in the cantina. Pirates, criminals, the well-to-do, soldiers, and common folk were all part of the same scene. Some were definitely native, looking very comfortable and relaxed in the environment, but most were travellers like herself, huddled into corners speaking quietly to each other, conducting business they rather not be noticed. 

The noise was loud, but it was a white kind of noise. Voices blended together with whatever strange, obscure music happened to be of choice. Beta’s people never listened to music. For her, it was just another foreign string of words.

And then --

“Violet!”

Hearing her name startled her. She perked up and looked around, and was surprised to see a barmaid running toward her.

Tallest Almighty.

_Isha._

The last time she and Isha had seen each other was when they were stationed together at an Irken military base on Blorch, keeping blooming pockets of rebellion at bay. It had been part of a long tour in that section of the galaxy, their final stop. For years Isha had been part of her group along with Alpha and Omega. But she didn’t follow them on afterward; she had a love for trouble. Either that, or trouble seemed to love finding her.

“Is it you? Is it really you?”

“Yeah,” Beta sighed, rubbing her forehead in exasperation. “It’s me all right.”

Isha blinked, smiling wide as the short lashes around her pink eyes fluttered with interest. “Wow, I knew it was you the minute you walked in,” she cooed, leaning into Beta for a better look. “Oh my. What happened to your face?”

Beta gritted her teeth. It created a cage in front of her tongue, which she was usually so quick to lash out. Doing it here could be detrimental.

“I’ve been through a lot,” she answered slowly and simply, trying to keep her cool. She eyed Isha’s uniform, a corset placed over a sleeved top and a long red skirt, meant to accentuate her features in ways Beta couldn’t really understand. It was something other races often did, but their people weren’t really the flashy kind. 

Isha heaved a heavy sigh, setting down the tray she held, and took the seat across from Beta. “Me too,” she said, stretching her arms out across the table. She laid her head on them, peering up at Beta tiredly. “I’ve been trying to work off my debt. It’s been a whole year now, and I’m still nowhere even close.”

“Your debt?”

“Mhm.” Isha frowned. “I stole the bar master’s ship while abandoning my post on Schmorp. I lost it when the Empire caught up to me, and they’re making me do this now.”

Beta sat up straight with intrigue, her thin eyes wide and alert with shock. “You _what?_ _Abandoned_ your post?”

Isha nodded, grimacing. “I got tired of being a soldier and worked as a bounty hunter for awhile, but the Empire took all my money when they caught me.” She groaned. “I hate this stupid job.”

Beta stayed quiet, still completely dumbfounded that any Irken soldier could betray their obligation, even the first time.

“And there’s a really good bounty out right now, too!” Isha continued, peering up at Beta with excited eyes. “If I could do that, it would do more than pay off my debt. But I can't leave.”

“A bounty, huh?” Beta asked, uninterested. She really just wanted Isha to take her food order.

“Yeah! For half a million monies, more if she's alive,” she said, reaching into her skirt pocket. She pulled out a datapad with a cracked screen, dirt dusting its edges with years of overuse. “This girl is in really big trouble. But,” she ranted, giving her shoulders a shrug, “I guess anyone would be, if they killed a Tallest.”

Isha handed the datapad to Beta to take a look. Her brow furrowed, and brought it closer to her face. Something about them was familiar. Really familiar. 

She recognized her. But how, where?

Her name was Jek?

_Jek._

It took her a moment, scraping the surface of her mind. Somehow that name matched the face. Somewhere, she knew her. Somewhere --

_Jek!_

“The vent!” she cried, the memory flooding back to her, giving the datapad a good slam onto the table. She had met Jek on the transport ship, and they planned on escaping together. “She’s the one from the ship. The pilot. I _know_ her.”

Isha picked up her head, her antennae cocked with intrigue. She breathed in to speak, but was interrupted by a loud voice.

“Hey, girl!” someone shouted from behind her, holding up their large, empty glass. “We need another round.”

Isha seemed to groan inwardly, followed by a fake, bright smile.

Through her teeth, she whispered, “I'll find you later.”

_Like hell you will._

Isha bounced out of her seat and gathered her tray, prancing over to the table to perform her duties.

Beta sighed again, leaning backward in her chair. She still hadn’t placed her food order.

She gazed down at the datapad Isha left on the table, the bounty glaring back at her at maximum brightness. While she waited to be helped she read the report about how Jek had allegedly took Tallest Tau’s life. Beta thought back to her time with Jek in the vent, and the monster that killed Alpha. Had they been connected this whole time, Jek and the weird guy? Was there a possibility that they could have conspired together? They did seem awfully close.

She remembered the disconnect between their stories: Jek had said that the co-pilot locked her, the Tallest, and someone else in the room before leaving them to die. Then Beta overheard him say while she was in the vent that Jek had died along with them.

Would he have assumed such a terrorist position if he had known Jek was alive? Did he lie on purpose, or was killing her his goal? He seemed to have no sense of moral conscience or direction. It was as if through his cold, striking green eyes you could see that he was without consideration of other beings like himself -- to people. There was almost something non-Irken about him, almost mechanical. Controlled.

The more Beta read it, the more she couldn’t believe it. There was something bigger happening here. She could feel it. 

As the night went on, she eventually was able to eat a meal and have a drink. By that time, several hours later, her ship was ready, and Isha was nowhere to be seen.

Which was good -- she didn’t want her following her anywhere. Isha was kind at heart, but hard to handle. Beta had a difficult time understanding how other people felt, and Isha was a girl with a lot of feelings. She was always talking, always multitasking, singing, and being generally very loud, to the point of overload on Beta’s part. After bunking and fighting with her for a few years, she had grown to be exhausting just to look at. Beta knew that she couldn’t help it. Isha was different. But she was a flavor that didn’t suit her palette.

“That’ll getcha where you’re going,” the Screwhead mechanic said, taking off their gloves. They and Beta stood underneath the white lights of the fuel station, alone. Most of the commotion from earlier in the evening had died down, and it had become almost eerily quiet. “We looked over the thing and couldn’t find anything else wrong with ‘er.”

“Thanks,” Beta said, handing them a handful of monies. “I hope this is a good enough payment method for you.”

The Screwhead nodded. “Irken money is dirty money, but it spends good. It’s worth a lot out here.”

She ignored their comment, unwilling to waste another second on this barren, desolate rock. She tipped her head in parting and got into her ship. The inside was completely undisturbed, just the way she liked it. And in a few hours, she would be on Portia, and she could get this thing out of her.

Beta sat down in the captain’s seat, and lifted off. By the time she had broken the atmosphere, her hand already on the accelerator ready to launch herself into warp. And just as she did, the blackness of space swirling all around her -- 

“Violet.”

Beta whipped around in her seat so fast, the arms of her PAK shooting out with shock, her ray guns at the ready and pointed right at Isha’s face.

“Isha,” she growled, pushing herself up out of the captain’s chair. “Why are you here?”

“Well…” Isha began, biting her lower lip. “I’ll tell you if you promise not to get mad.”

Beta blinked. “But I’m _already_ mad.”

“Okay, then….” Isha paused, her bottom lip disappearing underneath the bite of her teeth. “I might have tried to steal your ship.”

“And when that didn’t work, you stowed away? To abandon yet _another_ duty required of you by the Empire?”

Isha shrugged. “I guess,” she said nonchalantly, a little pep in her voice. Her clothes were changed, Beta noticed, into something a little more tactical: more precise and functional, complete with a blaster hooked onto her hip. “When I noticed the ship was to be auto-piloted to Portia, I decided to come along. In my defense, I didn't know this ship was yours.” She gazed up, looking around a little. “It's very nice.”

“Why?” she asked. “Portia is hardly habitable.”

“Did you not read my datapad at all?” Isha said, holding it back up for Beta to see. “That’s the last known planet of this girl’s location.”

There was an awkward silence between them. Isha looked to Beta expectantly, her pink eyes far more round than usual. However, she had no idea what she was talking about.

“Oh, I get it,” Isha said, letting out a short laugh. “You're just joking with me, like I don't know exactly what you're up to.”

“Wait.” Beta took a step back, her hand tightening around the clothing against her chest. “You know -- ?”

The other Irken giggled again. “Of course, silly. You’re after the bounty, too! On the pointy-toothed girl!” Isha’s feet tapped the floor of the ship excitedly, her squealing audible behind her closed lips. “It'll be so much fun, just like old times!”

“I don't do bounties anymore,” Beta said quickly, clearing her name. “I chose my place in society and stuck with it, like we both planned to. I'm a soldier now.”

Isha quieted down, Beta’s words sobering her small reality. “I'm sorry,” she said. “In the end I just couldn't do it. The people we fought were usually innocents -- civilians. Bounties are put on the bad guys. I wanted to punish bad guys to make this universe a better place, not destroy planets for parking lots and convention halls.”

Beta never thought about it that way. She always thought of fighting as her duty to the Empire, and her society. Not once did she question that authority. But when Isha put it so simply, somehow she began to understand that she had her own way of thinking about things.

“I’m not as mad as I was before,” Beta assured her, trying to find the words to describe the way she felt. There was a heavy pause between them. She felt so many feelings, but wasn't sure how else she could convey them, if ever at all.

Isha smiled, seeming to understand her struggle for words. “I missed you, too.”


	27. Puppet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tallest Zeta puts her plan into motion.

The Xenomorph queen writhed against her bonds, a series of thin tubes braided together to form several large, thicker hoses. These tubes pierced the chitin armor of her back and shoulders, leaving her suspended, her feet unable to comfortably touch the ground. A tank filled with colorless, viscous fluid rumbled softly as it fed fluid through the tubes, directly into her thick, acidic veins. The fluid was both a boon and a burden to her, serving as a nutrient source, while the added sedative kept her compliant.

Despite all of this she was a spectacle of pride, her tall, towering carapace casting a long shadow behind her. She would occasionally bob her head and slowly swing it from side to side in her frustration, eager to regain her freedom.

Every hour a single egg would pass through her massive, bulging birth sack, then a scientist would collect it. She always showed aggression, hissing and snarling as they neared her. But the sedative dulled her senses long enough for her egg to be carried away, frozen, and sent to its predestined, offsite location.

_Vort._

Tallest Zeta watched as two scientists stood a safe distance from the creature, writing notes on the datapads that hovered before them. She and Fabius stood on the second floor, an overlook that wrapped around the tall central column of glass. The glass contained the room below, giving it high, inescapable walls, but also decent ventilation.

“Fabius,” Zeta said, meeting eyes with the smaller, older Irken. “How does she fare, do you think?”

“She is smaller than the control sample,” Fabius admitted, poking a finger at the datapad in his hand. “Compared to her, our queen is only two-thirds of the size she should be, and lays nearly half of the eggs.”

Zeta growled under her breath in frustration. 

“I can offer a solution, my Tallest.”

“And what would that be?” she asked skeptically.

“According to Cypher One,” he began, doing a quick search on his datapad, “subjects kept strictly on a fluid diet often display a brief stunt in growth. They take longer than their peers to reach their full size. Your queen is only months old, after all.”

“How _much_ longer?” 

“Approximately six months.” Then he added, “My Tallest.”

“We don’t have that kind of time.” She bit her thumb in thought, her icy eyes cold and distant. She was anxious, he knew. And she didn’t have to explain why.

He watched the scientists down below adjust the pressure to the queen’s fluids. The creature grumbled drowsily, baring her teeth slowly, drunkenly. 

She would overcome the effect in time.

The longer he could stall Zeta, the better. 

“Prisoners.”

Her sudden voice caught him by surprise, his mind failing to catch up to her thought process. “My Tallest?”

“Prisoners, Fabius,” she repeated. “If the queen is hungry, we will feed her.”

His mouth fell open for a mere second as he inhaled, containing the heat of terror that bloomed within him. Fabius’s bionic eye swiveled nervously, and he reached up for it with a gentle sleight of hand. “Your own people?” he breathed, keeping his facial expression neutral. Yet, he felt far from it.

Tallest Zeta reigned in her fear and sadness, her cold elegance restored. “Traitors, rebels, and war criminals -- defectives -- are _not_ my people,” she explained, crossing her arms behind her back. “Or yours.”

What she mentioned was treason. Illegal, completely devoid of right. He wanted nothing but to stop her there and then as she walked away from him, back into the shadow of the elevator behind where he stood. But Fabius knew that there was nothing he could do: Tallest Zeta was the law. Her power superseded his. For now, at least.

 _Soon,_ he thought, giving the Xenomorph queen a single, final glance. _Soon, you will set us all free._


	28. Something New

Pip sat crouched upon a stool at a lab bench, watching dully as numbers rose and fell on the screen of a mounted terminal before her. Four vialed blood samples were locked into the module that connected to it, taking in the gargantuan amount of data the samples provided. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jek pick absentmindedly at the bandage on the crook of her arm. Around them, the monitors buzzed. The terminals beeped.

Rhythmically. 

_Quietly._

“Your results are great -- normal,” Pip announced as the numbers settled on the screen. She used her finger to scroll down, pausing for a moment, and continued again. “No abnormalities, no deficiencies. You’re as healthy as ever.”

“Oh,” Jek breathed softly with relief. “That’s good.”

The room fell quiet again, _again_.

In the past week they had spent together there had been no talk of the Xenomorphs, no talk of Cypher Six. They hardly kept a conversation at all. Pip was still too exhausted from the surprise complication with the mercenaries’ downed ship, and the emotional toll that cost her to begin to discuss their next move. She knew that if she was tired, then Jek must be, too.

She turned away and began to log Jek’s results. She could do another round of blood work later, just to make sure she was maintaining her progress and recovering from starvation. Pip put Jek on a liquid diet at first, which she knew Jek silently hated. They were full of nutrients and vitamins, but they smelled horrible. They must taste just as bad if not worse.

As she turned back to her work she noticed Jek gazing blankly at her, and Jek promptly looked away. One of her hands formed a fist behind her back, her fingers gripped tightly around a section of crumpled fabric in an attempt to keep it together. 

There was a Hogolus in the room, and neither of them wanted to talk about it. 

“You can change out of that gown now,” Pip said, finally. “It must be uncomfortable.”

Jek nodded, careful to stand without flashing her backside. Pip looked away knowingly, and grabbed the blood samples from the module. She would dispose of them properly in the next room and give Jek enough space to change. 

Pip stood and moved to the next room, nothing more than glorified closet space. She rolled the vials over and over in the gloved palm of her hand as she walked quietly, meditating on the sound of them clinking softly together. 

They were stuck. No ship, dwindling supplies. In her heart Pip knew their time was almost up. Her work was nearly done. After that -- what then? What would become of her? What would become of Jek?

_What are we going to do?_

She looked down in her hand, and squeezed.

_Still warm._

Then Pip tossed the vials of blood into a biohazard hatch, and hit the eject button. The compartment locked and made a wheezing, whooshing sound followed by a loud, grinding crunch. A louder whoosh indicated it had been ejected out, and the hatch loosened up again. 

“Hey, Jek?” Pip called, her feet already carrying her to the doorway. “Are you finished?”

“Yes. I’m dressed,” came a soft, distant reply. 

She walked back out into the main section of the lab where Jek stood pulling on her right boot, stepping in with the right amount of force to get her foot in. She wasn’t donning her usual outfit.

“What a fresh change from the engineering suit!” Pip said as she approached, eyeing the bright orange cargo pants Jek wore first with interest, then with curiosity. Had Cypher Two ever worn those before? She couldn’t remember.

“Yeah,” Jek said, pulling down the rumpled hem of her tank top. White was a very sobering, mature color on her. “The bloodstain wouldn’t come out, so.”

“Oh.”

_Yikes._

“Well,” Pip began, pausing as her mind struggled for kinder words, “it looks very nice.”

The corner of Jek’s mouth cracked a faint smile. “Thanks.” 

Another awkward silence. Pip lifted the sleeve to her lab coat and rubbed her arm nervously, gaze downcast. There was so much she wanted to say. 

“Hey.”

She craned her head back up right as Jek spoke.

“So,” Jek asked, “what’s all that stuff in the storage room?”

“The storage room?” Pip quipped curiously. “What do you mean -- “

_Oh._ She remembered. _That._

“Oh, that’s just, um,” she wavered, trying to use the better of the words that popped into her head, “some of my old stuff.”

“Oh, okay.” Jek turned away. “I was just wondering. It's kind of a mess in there.”

Pip felt her face go hot, and she couldn’t understand why. Her stomach dropped and her throat tightened up, threatening to extinguish the words that wanted to come out, drowning her in silence. 

“Actually,” Pip said, “why don’t you come with me?”

Jek faced her again, her expression curious. There was a question written on her face, and Pip already knew the answer.

“Come on.” She smiled. “There’s some things I want to show you.”

Pip lead Jek into the storage room. They were careful with their footing, stepping over strewn about clothes, old laboratory equipment, and discarded computer parts. When Jek had first come back Pip vowed to clean up her mess in here first, but had gotten sidetracked with trying to reorganize and rearrange things that it just hadn’t really happened. 

She motioned for Jek to follow her over a few stacked crates that Pip had to climb over, but Jek simply had to step high. Nestled atop a square, neatly arranged pile was a small, red, unlabelled crate.

“Jek, could you reach that crate and bring it down for us, please?” Pip asked, gesturing to it with a tilt of her head. 

Jek reached up high with a graceful kind of ease. She attempted to snatch the crate one-handed, but realized just how burdensome it was. Grabbing it, she leaned forward slightly with mild struggle, her brow furrowed as she finally set it down. 

“Tallest Almighty, that’s heavy for such a small crate,” she remarked, rolling her wrists. 

“But worth it,” Pip promised, taking a seat on a clean section of the floor. Jek mirrored her, pushing aside a few scraps of metal to make herself a spot. Pip unhinged the lid, popping it off as Jek looked on in piqued interest. 

The inside of the crate revealed a neat, ordered collection of comic books. Jek’s eyes widened with surprise, and then even more so once she realized just what they were getting into.

“Books?” she gasped loudly, leaning forward to get a better look into the crate. “Real books?”

Pip crossed her arms proudly and nodded. “Real. Books. And not just any books,” she specified, her smile widening. “ _Comic_ books.”

Jek couldn’t seem to help herself. She reached into the crate and pulled out a random title of a random issue. It had a muscular male Vortian on the front, holding a very dainty heroine in one arm, supporting a gun with another. 

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Pip said, giving a low whistle of appreciation. She crawled over to where Jek sat, and made a seat beside her. Jek opened the book up to the middle, and flipped it to the back cover in confusion, and then the front. 

“Like this.” Pip adjusted the comic in Jek’s hands, turning it to the cover, and then turning it to the first page. “Then you read it left to right,” she explained, running her finger over the panels to demonstrate. “Just like that.”

Jek squinted at the dialogue, scanning it over it quickly, and went back to the beginning to take in the artwork. She paused for a long time on a single panel as if she were trying to understand it, dissecting it piece by piece. 

“I thought the Empire destroyed these,” she breathed, glancing over to Pip with a strong, genuine amazement. 

“Not all of them,” she said, singing the syllables of her words. She flashed a devious, crooked smirk. “I collected these for years. Some of them are still even in print, just underground. It costs a _lot_ of monies.”

“I just --” Jek said, shaking her head. She ran her thumbs over the pages she held in her lap. “I can’t understand a word of Vortian, but just by the pictures I feel like I _could_ understand.”

“That’s because it’s _art_ ,” Pip explained. “Our Empire considers the inspiration and emotion you feel from these pictures to be dangerous, even if you can’t understand the words.”

Jek flicked over to the next page. The male character pulled the female character in by the waist as they leaped forward together, latching onto a nearby rope. They gazed into each other’s eyes confidently, trustingly, swinging over the gaping cavern in their path onto the safety of solid ground below. There they separated, running off to face the next obstacle before them. 

“This is so cool.” Jek flipped through to the next page, then the next, then back to Pip. “How many of these are there?”

Pip paused a moment to think. “Hmm,” she hummed, “maybe only twenty or so of those. But!” She rummaged in the pile, fingering through the selections. “That’s more of an action-adventure type of deal. Typical romance-y trope, strong guy gets the smart girl kind of thing. If you like more psychological, space opera thrillers like me,” she continued, slipping a new issue into Jek’s hands, “this might be more your style.”

“I didn’t understand a word you just said,” she admitted, accepting the comic and setting the other one aside. “But I’ll believe you. Wait --” Jek paused, pointing to the pair of aliens on the cover with a hint of awe in her voice, “what race are they?”

“Oh, they were made up,” Pip said, shrugging, “designed by the person that drew them.”

“Designed?” Jek echoed. “Like -- created?”

“The author thought it would be neat if people looked that way so that’s how they chose to draw them, but those kind of people don’t exist in reality.”

Jek blinked slowly, confused. “How can you make something that doesn’t exist?”

Pip blinked, completely unprepared for that kind of question. She pried her brain for the correct response, but couldn’t think of anything completely satisfactory. “They just… _did_ ,” she said. “They imagined a new kind of people, and put them on paper.”

“So… they were a control brain?”

“No, Jek,” Pip laughed softly. “The author was a person. A Screwhead, actually.”

Jek went quiet, seemingly numbed from the sobering realization that a person could create. Pip was hardly surprised, yet still she was; Jek had been a lifelong agent of the Empire, never exposed to illegal material such as art, or likely even music. But for one to go their entire life without knowing that they could imagine, that they could create was terrifying -- even for her.

“It’s like that flamethrower you made, Jek,” Pip added, nudging her on the shoulder. “You had the parts and you built it, as limited as those parts were. Some parts you even made yourself, right?”

“Yeah, but,” Jek said hesitantly, “this would be like if I imagined the parts before I even knew what I wanted to build.”

“Not really. Artists get inspiration from flora, fauna, mythic creatures, just like you got the inspiration from the shape of a rifle to make a flamethrower. You’re very creative.”

Jek looked up, considering Pip’s words for a moment. Pip hardly noticed at first the faint, crooked smile, the vague twitch at the tips of her antennae. And, was she… blushing? 

“Good point,” she said finally, questions still hanging to her words. She would figure it out on her own later, probably. She turned through the pages, previewing the panels quickly, scanning the art to get the gist of the story before she began.

Pip poked a finger at one of the pages as Jek thumbed it over, turning the page back. “She’s my favorite,” Pip said, rubbing her index excitedly over the character. “She has wings and no one thinks she can fly, but she can. It’s a secret until she really needs to use it to save her family. But that’s way later.”

“Very interesting.” Jek bobbed her head appreciatively, paying closer attention. The characters were suddenly caught between a gun and a sword fight. They hugged each other for comfort and protection as shots rained around them and heads fell to the ground, severed from their previous bodies.

For the first time in a long time, Pip felt content. Jek was focused on the story, passing by each page more and more slowly, completely absorbed. She wasn’t thinking about Dirk. She wasn’t thinking about the Xenomorphs. 

And right now, that’s all that mattered.

Pip found herself lost in watching her, in someone who was experiencing art for the first time -- maybe even her first story. She wondered what her life before must have been like as a pilot on the largest, most prestigious ship in the Irken Armada; the number of galaxies she must have seen, the number of worlds she must have journeyed to, the new races of people she must have met.

But then, how many of those galaxies has she seen destroyed? How many organic sweeps had she witnessed? How many had she _conducted_? The worlds she must have seen and been forced to destroy, blinded by loyalty and faith of the figures that had placed the weight of their destruction on her shoulders.

Pip wasn’t a stranger to this breed of evil. She grew up wholly consumed by it. She too had destroyed.

But creation could be just as heinous.

“Wow.”

Jek’s voice brought Pip back to the moment. She blinked the haze in her eyes away and looked down to a page inked entirely in blue. There were petals of red dappling the background in contrasting color. The two heroes stood embraced in the foreground, joined by a kiss.

Jek closed the book, pressing it against her chest as she leaned back against the stack of crates behind her. She slowly closed her eyes, and sighed.

Was that… good?

All Pip could do was stare. She had a sharp face, but soft features. She looked so content, as if something within her had been fulfilled. As if, a long-standing question had been answered, somewhere. Somehow.

“Pip,” Jek said, catching Pip in her gaze again. “Are we friends?”

Pip cocked her head, taken back by the suddenness of her question. “Of course,” she answered, then hesitated as she felt her stomach dropping, her heart beating faster.

Jek motioned her closer with a light flick of her antennae. 

Pip’s insides burned. Her mind couldn't understand exactly why she had gotten to her knees, why she crawled over to her so readily. There was something warm in Jek’s gesture. Something she needed.

Or maybe, just something she wanted.

Pip sat beside her, nervously shuffling her shoulders against the crates Jek also rested against. Jek held out her hand, and moved her fingers slightly.

“What?”

“Hold my hand,” Jek said, pushing her hand closer. 

“Um,” Pip muttered, “why?”

“We're going to die here,” she said. But her words were without malice, without worry. They were very matter-of-fact. Simple. “We won't get out, just like the heroes in the book.”

“I hate to spoil it for you, but they get a ship later,” Pip said quickly. “Like, I even think it's in the next issue --”

“Pip, please,” Jek interrupted gingerly. “Just hold my hand.”

She didn't.

Pip leaned up on her knees and cupped Jek’s face in her hands, brushing her thumbs briefly over her features. Her skin was just as soft as it looked, making her lips all the more enticing. 

She pulled her into a kiss: tender, and gentle, nothing like the one Jek had given her. 

Had that been nothing more than part of Jek’s plan on the mercenaries’ ship, or was had there been a sliver of truth in it, as small as that might have been?

Pip cared to find out. And she did, just as Jek took Pip’s left hand, and squeezed. 

“Is this what friends do?” 

Pip shook her head. “I don't know what this is. Any of it,” she admitted. “I just know that I want to find out.”

Jek took Pip’s hand and brushed her fingers with her own. “I don't know anything about you,” she said. “You don't know anything about me.”

“But I want to. And I want to tell you.” Pip closed her other hand over Jek’s in addition to the first. “I'm just scared.”

“Of what?”

“I'm scared that you won't like what you find,” Pip confessed. “Jek, I'm not a good person. I want to be and I've tried, but I'm not.” 

“I don’t understand,” Jek said. “Sure you created these monsters, but --”

“No, I didn’t create just monsters,” Pip said. “I created weapons. That’s what I do. That’s my mission: to create these weapons, test them, fine-tune them, perfect them.”

“Your mission is not to study them after all?”

“That’s part of it.” Pip sighed, releasing her hold on Jek’s hand. She let her own fall to her lap, and she interlocked her fingers. “It all began with one egg that was given to me. It hatched, and the resulting female became a queen. She began laying her own eggs, but they were all clones of her. So I began collecting her eggs, and genetically enhancing them while they were still in the embryonic stage so that they would be more resistant to fire, more pack-oriented, grow bigger, stronger, and a likelihood of more muscle mass. I could go on. You get the idea.”

“But _why_?” Jek asked, appalled. “And where did you get a xenomorph egg?”

“I was ordered to do so. The egg was already here, in this very lab. Frozen and dormant, but very much alive.”

“Ordered?” Jek asked.

She didn’t want to say. The name hung to the tip of her tongue. Her heart beat in her auricles, overcome by the feeling that although she was far, far away, she could still hear her, that she could still control her wholly, subtly, without Pip’s knowledge, without her question.

“Tallest Zeta.” She choked on her words, the lump in her throat feeling like the only thing that kept the contents of her stomach within her. “Tallest Zeta wanted the xenomorphs.”

Jek flinched at the realization, or maybe, because she felt she had just heard the words of treason. Through the thinness of her features, Pip could see Jek’s jaw tighten as she clenched her teeth. Anger seemed to rise within her, boiling her from the inside. 

“And Tallest Tau knew.”

“Yes,” Pip admitted. “Tau knew, and he not only disagreed with her tactic, but he realized somewhere along the way that he had been kept in the dark throughout the entire planning process. She used the portal to mask her other operations. But once he found out, it was too late to stop it.”

“That’s why Dirk killed him.”

“Yes. Zeta lured him to this planet for you, Tau, and the rest of your crew to die.”

“But, how? It was Invader Blue’s transmission that caused Tallest Tau’s concern,” Jek muttered loudly, tripping over her words in her eagerness. “Invader Blue -- “

“ -- was Cypher Five,” Pip interjected, her tone more serious than ever. “Invader Blue was Cypher Five, and that was her mission: lure Tau to the surface, make it look like a horrible accident, and cover up the rest.”

Jek pursed her lips. “You say was, as if --”

“She’s dead.”

A silence fell between them. Jek sighed, running her hands along the smooth skin of where her headset used to be. Pip knew she was frustrated. She should have told Jek earlier. She should have come clean all at once to avoid the distrust that undoubtedly stood between them. But there hadn’t been time. They only just met then, and Jek was still in shock. 

Jek placed the book on top of the open crate as she stood. She walked a few steps away, her arms crossed, and her antennae slumped in blatant distress.

“How do you know she’s dead?” Jek asked, her question hardly more than a whisper.

Pip stood too, but didn’t approach her. “I found her body. She had an embryo inside of her, and her chest erupted.”

“Is that how they breed?” Jek turned around, her ruby eyes fiery and glistening with… something Pip had never seen in them before. “Is that what happened to the other one hundred fifty Irkens on this planet? Is that why they went missing?”

Pip picked at her fingernails, clicking them slowly, nervously. She looked down at her hands and said, “Yes. Probably.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t know about it?”

Pip bit her lower lip. Every muscle in her was tense. Every word felt like it was choking her, tighter and tighter with every syllable. She stopped clicking her nails. Instead, she trembled.

From Shame. From sadness, from anger, from hopelessness. 

“I knew about it,” she blurted, her proceeding words harsh and coarse from the soreness in her throat as her emotions threatened to break her down. “I knew about it, and I did nothing to stop it.”

Despite her size, this was the first time she had ever felt so small. Pip blinked up to Jek, knowing that what she was saying was ruining anything that they could ever possibly have, perhaps, other than becoming enemies.

And that’s when she realized what it was, the new expression in Jek’s stare:

_Disappointment._

“Because,” she continued, “this planet is set for organic sweep. It’s only a matter of time. No one is meant to survive this,” she said, tears bubbling onto the edges of her eyelashes. “Not even me.”

Pip wept openly, doing nothing to cover the eruption of emotion that poured from her eyes and oozed from her nasal pores. She took a step forward.

“I’m a prisoner here,” Pip confessed. “I’m guilty of war crimes against the Empire. I betrayed Tallest Zeta years ago. She discovered that I was giving away her secrets to the enemy because, like Tau, I disagreed with her methods. But what she doesn’t know” Pip said, “is that I still betray her now.”

“Show me,” Jek said, offering Pip her hand. 

This time, she took it.

A small smile bloomed against the gloom of her other features. “Okay,” she said, wiping her face with the long sleeve of her lab coat. “But I can’t promise you’ll like it.


	29. Attached at the Hip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pip makes a phone call.

Pip lifted a small, metallic panel next to the wall of her closet in her personal room. Underneath a button was revealed, so thin that it was easily hidden. She pressed it in, and the floor of the closet shifted left into a thin slit that extended into the wall. Beneath that, was a door.

“Watch your step.”

She moved around the crates they set aside from the closet, and opened the hidden hatch with a twist of her wrist and a tiny _click_. Pip motioned for Jek to join her, gesturing that she go in first.

Upon further inspection, the hatch wasn’t a sort of path or walkway like Jek expected: it was an elevator, a tube with a magnetized bottom that carried passengers up or down.

A hidden elevator? Hardly trustworthy, but it explained a lot about what Pip had been doing in her free time.

She slipped into the elevator, claustrophobic for one, and very snug for two. Pip hoisted herself down after her, keeping herself to the sides of its cylindrical shape. Even then she and Jek were pressed together, Jek’s elbow awkwardly stuck in the crook of Pip’s neck. Pip had to make the decision to either face her and bury herself into Jek’s stomach, or turn around and place her butt against her instead.

Pip chose to face away.

Why couldn’t they have just taken turns?

The ceiling was uncomfortably low. Jek had to bend her knees as best as she could without pushing Pip against the glass. Her antennae were tucked back around her shoulders, scrunched with the rest of her lanky body.

She couldn’t wait to be someplace that wasn’t built entirely for someone half her size.

Pip pressed the button on the panel on the side of the elevator. They both stood stiffly as they descended, eyes averted from each other. Part of Jek wanted to say something, anything, to break the tension between them. But, she was devastated. 

In the middle of her thoughts, she caught Pip’s reflection. Pip was looking straight ahead at the passing walls, completely withdrawn. Her arms were wrapped around herself as if she had caught a chill, and her expression was distant. 

Suddenly, something tickled on the ends of Jek’s antennae. Instinctively she angled her head forward, only to be met with resistance and a sudden, “Ouch!”

“Sorry,” she whispered, hushed by her embarrassment. 

Somehow their antennae had gotten tangled together. Pip tried to turn around to unhook them, but at the awkward angle and with no room, the only way to do it was to swing all the way around and let them fall out of each other naturally. 

And that meant Pip compressing herself against Jek’s middle. Pip gazed away stiffly, purposely keeping her eyes averted. Out of respect, or out of something else? Jek couldn’t tell. 

Her breath was warm against her. She could feel her heart beating.

Finally, the platform stopped at the very bottom of its path. Jek wagered they must be at least a thousand units underground. The glass around them shifted sideways, the cylindrical panel ducking under the one beside of it. The movement created an exit. Pip stepped out.

Jek couldn’t believe her eyes.

Pictures. Thousands of them, on paper.

_Real paper._

The walls’ original muted gray color peeked through the thin cracks between the hand-drawn pages. They depicted an array of diagrams of the many stages of Xenomorph life, even what Jek guessed to be eggs. She recognized the type that burst from the soldier’s chest, and the larger, thinner ones. But there were others she wasn’t familiar with, and hoped she wouldn’t be.

She was frozen in place, her eyes scanning further downward to the rows and rows of tables cluttered in the middle of the room, containing full-bodied and cross-sectional models of the images she assumed to be described by Pip. There were active equipment set-ups. Clear and tan liquids bubbled in and dripped into glassware, heated underneath a blue flame or settled onto ice. It all seemed surprisingly upkept and frequently used.

“Don’t worry,” Pip said, advancing leisurely through the doorway of the room. “Those models are cast in wax. They are not living. Well, not now, at least.”

The faintly yellowed lighting was dim, so different from the floor above them. Whereas the lab above seemed lived-in and modern, starkly white, this room was old and cluttered, but far more tidy. There was not a single grain of dirt or speck of dust from what she could see as she followed Pip inside, ducking her head under the low doorway as she entered.

The ceiling was low. If Jek had been a centiunit taller she would have to crouch. She swerved between the lighting fixtures that hung low, merely singularly-bulbed lamps without a protective dome or shades, being extra careful to not let them touch her antennae.

Pip walked passed the groups of tables into another doorway on the wall to their right from where they had entered. She moved away the thin sheet that covered it as she stepped through, lingering a second longer to hold it open for Jek as she followed.

“This is where I do the majority of my work,” she said. Jek heard her, seeing Pip turn around to face her, but she was focused everywhere else but Pip, taking it all in. “The rough-draft stuff, anyway.”

It was like walking into a medical bay. But it was harsher with dull, matte silver rather than a usual, brilliant white. Cabinets lined the length of two of the walls, mounted above a single, long table, where idle lab equipment was set aside, such as a centrifuge, a balance, and a blender. Most of the items Jek couldn’t identify.

The center of the room was occupied by a lab bench, accessible from all sides. In the corner of the room containing a fume hood and a shower were several flattened gurneys folded on top of each other, all of which did not look made for any kind of people.

Every table, every countertop and chair had the same muted steel texture, being both rough and smooth, somehow. Even under light it looked cold to the touch, as if Jek scraped a nail against it she would send an unpleasant wave of sensation down her spine, aching her teeth, rattling her nerves to her core because of all of the shallow, numerous scratches on every surface.

It hit her suddenly. This wasn’t a medical bay.

It was a morgue. 

The only identifying difference was a large monitor. Its size was exaggerated in the comparingly small room. In front of the monitor was a Irken-styled data board, covering in writing. Biochemistry mechanisms and physics equations littered its surface, some of which convoluted and incomplete. Jek couldn’t understand a sliver of organic mechanisms, but the math made sense. 

Her eyes traced Pip’s work. She had some beautiful writing, Jek thought: neat and tidy with a hint of elegance. The math was flawless and fluid, detailing the significance of force and torque within a set of muscles, presumably for the Xenomorph. Except, then -- something wasn’t right.

The misuse of a variable.

It changed the math completely, skewing the last quarter of Pip’s work entirely. 

“Hey,” she began softly, glancing over it a second time to make sure she wasn’t going to look stupid for mentioning it, “solving for 'x' here, you factored this backwards --”

For a brief moment, the lights turned off. Jek blinked once and a deep, black-lit violet filled the room, illuminating the whiteness of Pip’s lab coat. She shrugged it off, revealing an all-black suit underneath that was hardly visible against the darkness of her skin.

“You won’t want to be seen by her,” she said, speaking over her shoulder. Pip’s eyes glittered fiercely, their violet hue enhanced and deepened by the sudden change in lighting. “Stand over there, behind the empty fluid tank.” Pip gestured far to her right. “Listen, but don’t watch directly. It isn’t exactly the perfect blind spot.”

Jek grimaced, eyeing the tank skeptically before doing as Pip said. She slid herself behind the fluid tank and the wall, finding a good stance within the dusty webbing of tubes and wiring about her feet. 

The reflection of the monitor flickering on caught her eye, mirrored in the glass of the tank. It was a blank, black screen with a symbol in the center: an Irken with inverted antennae, just like the one she had seen on the interface of the Voot Cruiser she was piloting before it was crashed by Dirk. 

A Cypher symbol.

“Cypher One.” 

“My Tallest.” Pip greeted her with a slight bow of her head. “I have a solution to your... problem.”

Her voice, normally devoid of any Irken accent was now thick with it, much like Jek’s own. Her demeanor, usually loose and animated was stiff and robotic -- rehearsed. 

On screen Tallest Zeta straightened her back. She raised a brow, crossing her arms with a pleased, intrigued grin. “Oh,” she said lightly. “Have you?”

Pip offered her a curt nod, and rolled out the databoard. The once black writing now glowed a violet hue beneath the blacklight. She gestured to her work with the wave of her hand. “As my research suggested, a queen supplied with a liquid diet displays a brief stunt in growth for the first several months of her life. Egg production is decreased, as she is growing so fast all of her nutrients are being used by her body to support the rapid muscle growth coupled with the constant shedding of her polarized skin, as necessary of adolescent and young adult queens.”

Tallest Zeta flicked her antennae boredly. 

“However,” Pip continued, “I have had success with an additive of a semiochemical released by an egg-laying queen that encourages cellular growth to its limits, resulting in a --“

“Bigger, better queen,” Zeta interrupted. “That is exactly what I need.”

Pip bit her lip.

_In hesitation? Dejection?_

It happened so fast, Pip herself might not have noticed. She continued smoothly, with a calm, soft smile. “I only wish to please you, my Tallest.” She bowed deeper this time, throwing her body into the gentle, practiced motion. “I will send Fabius my work. He will be able to translate it into an effective solution.”

“Make it so.” Tallest Zeta sighed a growl under her breath. “My patience with you is wearing thin.”

“I know.” Pip bowed even deeper, her neck craning forward uncomfortably. “I am honored and privileged that you allow me to continue to serve you.”

The monitor went abruptly dark. Pip remained still afterward.

A little too long afterward.

So many thoughts swirled in Jek’s head: about Dirk, about Tau, about Pip. There wasn’t enough time to process it all.

“Pip?” she called, slithering out of the crook she had wedged herself in. 

She got no answer. Pip just stood there, hard as stone.

“Pip.”

Jek walked briskly over to her, and squatted close to Pip’s eye-level. Pip’s head remained hung, her antennae flattened on her back powerlessly. She reached out to touch her, but Pip turned away, uninterested.

“I _hate_ her,” she said quietly. “Looking down on me with those eyes, degrading me, punishing me, ruining me, and having the nerve to say it was all of my fault.” 

Jek breathed in to interject, but Pip continued. “She deserves what’s coming to her,” she said darkly. “Her, and Cypher Six, for everything they’ve done to me.” She blinked up to Jek. “And to you.”

“Me?” Jek didn’t understand. 

“Jek,” Pip sighed, “I really need to tell you something.” 

Pip shuffled uncomfortably, the way she did when she had something to say. She picked at her nails again, eyes downcast. It made Jek nervous. Really nervous.

“When I found you, you were burned pretty badly,” Pip said. “Your ship crashed just outside the tunnel to the comm array. I had been working on it for quite some time. I’m not skilled in any technical areas of any kind, so it was taking me awhile,” she reasoned. “I wasn’t in my lab to hear the alarms signal. All I heard was a crash, and was overwhelmed with the strong smell of exhaust.”

Jek nodded, encouraging her to continue.

Pip took a deep breath. “Investigating the crash site, I was admittedly a lot more interested in anything useful in the ship. The shield was busted and you were lying a unit or two away, face down, the embers of your clothing slowly burning out. I thought you were dead.” She shook her head. “I went to see if there was anything on your person, found the memory core, pocketed it, and --”

The Empire be damned, Jek thought. She really is terrible.

“ -- I realized something.” Pip said. “I _know_ you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for keeping up with this work. Sorry my updating has been sporadic this entire year. A LOT has happened to me. I had surgery, moved more than 500 miles away from my home, all mixed with a bunch of personal stuff.
> 
> But! What I mean to say is that now that my life is stabilizing, I will be doing my best to update twice a month. I will definitely update EVERY month. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading! See you soon!!


	30. Three's a Crowd, Four is a Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The population of Portia gets a little bit larger.

“You know me?” Jek echoed, her expression wide and confused. “That’s _impossible._ ”

“You’re not going to like what I have to say,” Pip admitted, her voice strong. “I had been searching for the truth to Cypher Six for quite some time. Cypher Six was said to be indestructible, completely unbeatable, the most elusive, most talented of us all. No one knew him. We all only heard of him in passing. No one truly believed he existed. He must be some kind of rumor to just intimidate the rest of us.”

She shook her head. “When I was asked to work with him thirteen years ago on Vort, I had no idea that he was Cypher Six. He was so bright, so full of life, so loving, and pure. I never... ” she trailed off, dazed, her mind completely in another place. “I never thought that he could be so evil.”

Pip continued. “He let on nothing about his life before the mission. He was meant to be an assistant to the Vortian princess, Persephone, who was, well….” She rubbed her arms. “She was my lover, but that’s a different story entirely.”

Jek felt something flare inside her stomach. 

“I was so caught up in passion,” Pip said, getting back on topic, “that I hardly noticed Cypher Six never disclosed anything about himself. Nothing notable, nothing traceable. Except, one thing,” she paused, “you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. He loosely mentioned having a good friend, someone part of the Irken Armada,” she said. “But you started out as a ship engineer, didn’t you?”

“I did,” she confirmed, her brow raising in surprise. “I was an engineer -- well -- a _bridge technician_ , aboard a warship, a -- “

“ -- Ripper model,” Pip finished. “I didn’t think much of it. Everyone has friends somewhere. However, after he betrayed me, I made an attempt on his life to save Persephone’s and my own. He survived. I didn’t know where to find him. You were my only lead.” 

Jek interrupted. “You tried to kill him?”

“Of course,” Pip said matter-of-factly. “In the end, that made him more powerful. But you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

Jek needed to know more. She listened quietly.

“Looking into you, I learned not about a young engineer, but instead a talented pilot,” she said, beginning to pace slowly. “That talented pilot had been serving aboard a vessel that got hit head-on by a Vortian missile. The entire crew would have perished if it had not been for the engineer that bravely took control of the ship, flying it to safety only after single-handedly destroying the opposing, enemy craft.”

Pip was right. Somehow, Jek felt sick.

“It was remarkable,” she continued, her words heavy with praise. “So remarkable, that my interest was piqued. You got your seat on the Massive at an impressively young age. Not as an engineer, though, but as a pilot. Even the Tallest were impressed with you; you were able to do something that you hadn’t been trained for, something that a control brain didn’t program you to do. That part was especially odd.” Her expression tightened to a thin frown. “As far as I know, only Cyphers are capable of something like that. Or, defectives.”

Jek was frozen, her jaw tensed, her teeth pressed harshly together. She felt a ripple of heat rising in her. Anger? Maybe. Fear? Possibly. Guilt?

“So what are you trying to say?” she demanded. “You think I’m a Cypher?”

“I’ve suspected it,” Pip said, her voice low. “Even now, I still wonder.”

“I’m _not_ a Cypher. Defective, _likely_ , but not a Cypher,” Jek protested, throwing her arms out in disbelief. “You said you guys were assassins, trained in secret and given orders from a control brain. I’ve never even met one. I didn’t kill someone until several weeks ago when you set the whole thing up. Much less, I’ve never once spoken to Tallest Zeta directly, and even more so not over video chat with a colored shadow filter and a bunch of bowing and ass-kissing.”

“Yet you have Tau’s memory core.”

Something solid filled Jek’s stomach, hard and heavy. She was so furious, she was shaking. There was no way she could prove her innocence with that kind of statement hanging in the air. 

Pip blipped an image up on her monitor. Jek turned, and found herself staring back at her. 

**WANTED. JEK.**

Wanted?

**FOR HIGH TREASON, DEATH OF CIVILIANS, MURDER OF TALLEST TAU….**

“No,” she breathed, turning quickly back to Pip. She shook her head slowly, putting her heads out in front of her defensively. “You’ve got it all wrong.” Her voice croaked, her throat tight. “I didn’t do it. That should be Dirk’s picture up there, not mine.”

Pip’s eyes were cold and thin, filled with suspicion. “If you didn’t do it, then why would you have this?” she asked. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the memory core. It glistened even in the dim light of the room. “Why would you take something if it didn’t mean anything to you?”

“Because it does,” Jek insisted. “It just isn’t what you’re thinking it does.”

She shook the hand she held the memory core in, urging it forward in Jek’s line of vision. “Then what does it mean to you, Jek?” Pip snapped. 

“That memory core is my attempt to understand why we were really brought to this awful place,” Jek cried. “I wanted to know what he knew, what he had seen so I could understand, so I could somehow prove to myself and the rest of our people that something was indeed very, very wrong. Everything about our mission reeked of corruption. If he had known anything about this, it would be on that memory core. I can assert my stance all I want, but I will never have any solid proof. All I can give you is my word.”

Pip pursed her lips in thought. As the moments passed her troubled expression gradually began to soften. She unwound, uncrossing her arms. Her frown became less intense. “I suppose you’re right about this memory core providing the truth of Zeta’s crimes to an extent,” she said slowly, pocketing it. Pip leaned against one of the lab benches, pressing her palms on the edge to keep herself upright, back straight. 

She was still thinking. 

“Jek,” Pip said finally, “how do you take your plooka?”

Jek’s brow creased in confusion. “Plooka?” she asked. “Why are you asking me about food --”

Pip asked again. “How do you take your plooka?”

“I don’t,” she said. “I’ve never had it before.”

Pip sucked on her cheek, then clucked her tongue. “Hmm.” She crossed her arms, looking kind of let down. “Guess I was wrong. The plooka thing always works.”

Jek just gave Pip a look, and Pip elaborated.“That’s our _calling card_ , so to speak,” she explained. “Every Cypher has that certain phrase that’s like a tick; we hear it, and we can’t help but to reply with the appropriate answer. It can also help us identify each other in a situation.”

“Well, okay,” Jek began, nodding slowly. “Then, how do you take your plooka?”

“Live and squirming.”

Jek had no idea what to do with this information, but it was one of the most helpful things she had learned about the Cyphers so far. Well, assuming it was true. It seemed to content Pip just fine.

She sighed, tucking her hands into her pockets. Her eyes were locked on the tops of her scorched boots. A heaviness occupied her chest; she was angry, and she was hurt, and confused. There was still so much she didn’t know.

A bounty on her head. Who could have done something like that? For all she knew, she was presumed dead to everyone except Dirk. Did Dirk have this amount of power? How far could the Cyphers’ influence actually go?

Pip kind of laughed. She looked up to Jek, a thin smirk playing on her lips. “Sorry, I know it’s all kind of weird,” she said. 

Jek shrugged half-heartedly, as playfully as she could muster. “Sure,” she said, “just some light, casual brainwashing, and accusing your friends of murder and high treason. Normal stuff.”

“Yeah,” Pip giggled with a snort. “telling that friend that their ex-boyfriend is _actually_ a robot. Very normal stuff.”

Jek stopped dead, blinking long and slow. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “ _What_ was that?”

“Your ex is a robot,” Pip elaborated, but admittedly, not very well. “I’m pretty sure Cypher Six is indeed Dirk, given your close proximity to him and everything that went down on that ship. I’ve been thinking about it -- a lot. The fact that he was able to trick you all these years is good enough evidence as any to me to be able to say that’s the same bastard whose arms I cut off thirteen years ago.” She shrugged. “I mean, he tricked me very well for those several months on Vort. And if you are as naive as you put on, I can imagine that kind of thing would be easy for him.”

Her last couple sentences were so full of obscure, wild information that Jek didn’t even know where to begin, but she guessed starting with the boyfriend part might have been as good of a start as any. “He wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“Oh?” Pip blinked. “Weren’t you two together?”

“Together but not _together._ ” She thought for a second. “I think?”

Pip snorted dismissively. “Sounds like a commitment problem… or a robot one.”

Jek rolled her eyes. “Okay, I get it. He's a robot.” She sighed. “Thirteen years ago to this day, he's been a robot.”

Pip nodded. “Yep.”

Jek took her hand from her shoulder and placed it against her temple. She could feel a headache coming on. “And you… _cut his arms off?_ ”

Pip nodded again. “Sure did.”

“Tallest Almighty.” Jek was more numb than sick like before. Now, she was sure nothing Pip could say would ever surprise her, even if it wasn’t true. Pip’s lied before, but something about her demeanor and the surety in her voice kept Jek from considering that comfort. “So,” she said again, trying to understand, “he’s got robot arms?”

“Not only those, but a robotic torso, robotic legs, robotic eyes, a robotic…” she paused. “Well, you know. Probably.” She squinted up at Jek, as if taking the thought into consideration. “Like a --” she said, making a filthy gesture with her hand, “ _you know?_ ”

Jek closed her eyes and wished for death. If only she had actually died in that crash, and not ended up in the hands of a neurotic, dissociated -- whatever word existed to describe Pip. 

“And _how_ are you sure of that? I-I mean,” she stuttered, just completely appalled and mentally exhausted at this point, “I’ve never really noticed anything like that about him. Or his...” she imitated Pip’s foul gesture, “ _whatever._ ”

“Well, when you cut someone’s limbs off and expose their insides to the daylight, and they turn up alive years later with miraculous, almost supernatural, mental and physical abilities, that’s the easiest thing to assume,” she said very matter-of-factly. “And when you know someone who could have been commissioned to perform the surgery, it makes that possibility a lot more likely.”

“Sure Dirk is talented, but I wouldn’t say it’s _supernatural._ ” 

“You saw him hack a ship with his mind just by laying his hands on the control panel, remember?” Pip placed her hands on her hips, tipping her head, almost comically so. “You wouldn’t say that’s slightly impressive?”

Jek really hated this. “Guess you’re right,” she admitted. “But we were hardly more than kids back then.” She frowned. “What were you doing ripping a kid’s body apart?”

“When you watch someone dismantle a world and ensure the death of the love of your life and her people, you’ll definitely rip their guts out.” She sniffed. “I mean, whether you’re a freshly new adult or an older adult, you’re still an adult that needs to be accountable for your mistakes. I don’t think someone who’s a hundred and twenty years old could be considered a kid, still. Ninety, yes. A hundred, okay -- you’re a _new_ adult. But a hundred and twenty? Inexcusable.”

Jek was quiet, considering what she said. Suddenly, Pip jumped up a little, and said, “Oh yeah!” She pointed to Jek’s age on the screen. “This is wrong. While you were gone, you had a birthday. You’re twenty-five -- a full two hundred-fifty years old now. Happy belated birthday.”

“Oh.” Jek didn’t know what to say. “Thanks.” She eyed Pip silently for a moment, almost desperate now to change the subject. “How old are you, anyway?”

“What a rude question,” Pip teased. “I’m thirty-one by our Irken scale.” She put a finger to her lips and winked. “I’m not giving away how close to thirty-two I am.”

This whole Dirk is Cypher Six and also a robot thing was really getting Jek down. When Pip accused her of being a Cypher it had pissed her off, but now she could hardly feel anything, not even beginning to mention the impact of the realization that Tallest Zeta was committing treason against the people she had promised to protect.

She was numb and tired. Jek needed to be alone, and for a long while to contemplate everything Pip said. She would need time to piece it all together, weighing out the facts from the exaggerations and half-truths, if there were any. Pip wasn’t exactly the most honest when it came to herself, but she seemed reliable enough when speaking against someone else. But she didn’t know for sure.

Jek looked up at the monitor that still blared her portrait. In it she stood pleasantly unsmiling, gussied up in a freshly laundered Navigator’s uniform with the collar folded down. Jek had once been so proud of her position. Her eyes glistened even on screen, exuding that childlike, ignorant pride. She really had been happy then.

“And you won’t age a day more unless we get what we want.”

Jek braced herself and turned around, finding herself staring down the barrel of a blaster pistol. She dared to look past it to the pink eyes of another Irken. Something in them glittered, as if looking at the face of a long lost friend: _recognition._

Jek knew exactly what this was.

Someone had seen her bounty and has come to collect it.

Pip had already sprung into action, jumping up and kicking the blaster pistol out of the intruder’s hand with a swift blow to the wrist. They retaliated by raising their other wrist, effectively blocking the punch that swung from Pip’s left arm.

Jek dashed for the blaster pistol that skidded across the room toward a set of floor cabinets. She fell over herself in a mixture of panic and poor quick thinking, tripping over her own feet. She stumbled forward, catching herself on the palms of her hands. Jek stretched out, reaching as far was she could before feeling a boot pushing down on the small of her back.

She was pressed face-first. She grunted harshly, the air in her lungs escaping all at once. She turned her head to look up at her attacker, gasping a raspy breath as she did. The scarred face of another glared down at her, brandishing another blaster pistol in her hand. 

A mixture of excitement and fear enveloped her. It burned deep in her stomach, freezing her in the moment. She was pinned down by the dense weight of her attacker, and all she could do was say:

“Violet!”

Violet’s antennae flicked hesitatingly. But that didn’t stop her from thrusting the gun to the back of Jek’s neck, right above where her PAK met her spine. 

_Violet?_

Across the room Pip and the other Irken were engaged in a battle of wits more than strength. They were dodging each other’s kicks and throws. Pip used her small stature to her advantage, ducking and weaving her way through the web of incursion that threatened her. 

Her attacker picked up on it quick. They threw a fake punch, knowing that Pip would try to evade it by pulling back and ducking, but their leg was ready for her. Pip tripped backwards, falling hard onto her hands. She pushed herself back up quickly, jumping up onto her heels, but she was bested with another kick, this one landing square on her chest.

Jek wriggled underneath Violet’s weight, teeth gritted tight. “Just tell us what you want!” she shouted toward Pip’s attacker. They didn’t acknowledge her at all. She could feel Violet’s boot pushing further into her back.

“Are you Fabius’ assistant?” the attacker asked, their voice surprisingly light and feminine for the circumstance.

“Who wants to know,” Pip demanded, eyeing the lightly armored suit of the other, “bounty hunter?”

The attacker’s head gestured to Violet behind her. Jek looked up at her, trying to put the pieces together. They were working together to escape the transport ship last time they met. Violet had been trusting and welcoming; nothing like this.

“My friend here has got a problem,” the bounty hunter said. “She’s got a bug inside of her, and you’re the only one who can help.”

“ _Fuck_ your friend,” Pip spat. 

“Pip, wait,” Jek called out to her, her voice cracking under the strain of her compressed ribs. “I know her,” she said. “Her name is Violet. She is a friend. One of _my_ friends.”

“Then what business does she have with her boot against your spine?” she yelled back.

There was a thick silence in the room. The bounty hunter looked to Violet, who seemed to nod. They shared a brief, unspoken communication. They were making a decision.

Violet’s foot lightened on Jek’s back. Jek drew a deep breath, her chest and stomach aching with relief. She gazed up at Violet, seeking permission to stand. Surprisingly, her hand was extended out to meet her. Jek took it trustingly, but lightly, worried a lot more about Violet’s friend than her. 

“The name’s Beta now,” Violet said. She pointed over to her friend with a jab of her thumb. “That’s Isha.”

Jek nodded rapidly, her nerves not yet catching up to her. Beta put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed lightly. “Sorry about the guns,” she said, “but we weren’t sure how compliant you’d be.”

“Let go of my friend first,” Jek said. “Then we can talk about compliance.”

Beta’s jaw tightened. She looked to Isha for guidance. Isha frowned doubtfully.

Pip got to her feet as soon as Isha backed away, her movement graceful and practiced. She patting down the dusty areas on her lab coat, seeming far more inconvenienced than enraged at this point. 

“A _bug_ huh?” she said airily, her tone kind of bored. Or maybe it was just where she had gotten kicked in the chest. “How’d that happen?”

“You tell me,” Beta grumbled, tucking her pistol back into the holster on her hip. “I watched everything I loved die on this planet. Never even seen one of the things until it burst out of my squaddie’s rib cage.”

“Xenomorphs attach to the face in their larval stage, and enter through the host body’s mouth,” Pip explained, not getting the hint at all. “That’s where they nest inside the chest, stealing nutrients of their host before -- “

Beta was frowning. Deeply.

Jek reached out her hand as she walked toward Pip, eager to mend the tear in their fragile relationship before it was completely severed. “Pip,” she said slowly, “what Beta means is that she needs our help, because she’s been through a lot.”

“Yeah?” Pip shrugged. “And?”

Jek almost couldn’t believe she was being this difficult. “ _And_ if she’s got one of those Xenomorphs inside of her, surely you can take it out.”

“I can’t.”

The air in the room was tense, thick with rising animosity. Jek noticed Isha’s pistol hand twitch, her pink eyes darting quickly over to see where her gun had gone. Beta’s hands turned into fists, her eyes more narrow than before.

Everyone was staring at Pip.

“This is a research facility, not an infirmary,” Pip continued. “To perform something like that would be life-threatening, and --”

“You know if this thing stays inside me that I’m gonna die anyway,” Beta barked, marching up to Pip quickly. She grabbed her by the scruff of her collar, and yanked her forward, bending down to her eye level. “Either I die on an operating table, or I die where I stand.”

With her other hand, Beta put her pistol to her head.

Jek and Isha both took a quick step forward. Isha looked terrified. It was obvious that this wasn’t part of their plan.

Pip didn’t seem fazed. But a fire burned behind her gaze, reading deeply into Beta’s hardened expression. 

Then her eyes met Jek’s, bitter and thin. Gradually, they softened, and she gave an irritable sigh. “Fine. But like I said, I can’t promise you anything.”

Beta dropped Pip gently, lowering her back down onto her feet. She put her pistol down, but kept her hand on it. “Whatever,” she sighed, eyeing the gun sadly. “I’ve already lost everything I’m afraid to lose.”

“What about the surgery makes it especially dangerous?” Isha asked, her words trembling. She approached Pip worriedly, her hands clasped nervously at her chest. “It’s in her chest, right? Is it her heart?”

Pip shook her head. “Yes, but not quite. I’ve never performed something on a person before. I’ve only opened up things that were already dead. The anesthetic I have will need to be lightly dosed, or it could kill her,” she explained. “My instruments aren’t made for people. I can do this only in theory; it would be a lot of firsts for me. I don’t have any blood to transfuse if she bleeds out. If I extract the alien in the wrong way, it could get injured and burn her insides.” At her sides, her fingers wiggled nervously. “There’s a lot of mistakes I could make.”

“It doesn’t hurt to try,” Jek piped up. “Even if there’s the slightest chance to save Violet, er, I mean, _Beta_ , then it’s something worth doing.”

Beta breathed heavily, a fist curling at her chest. She looked uncomfortable -- maybe even in pain. “When would we be doing this?”

“Now, if you’re willing,” Pip replied. “I have the things I need in this very room. I would have to clean and set it up. It wouldn’t take long.”

Beta’s hand tightened. Isha hugged her from behind, putting her head on her shoulder. She rubbed one of Beta’s arms affectionately, letting her know that when she went under the knife, she wouldn’t be alone.

“I’ll help with whatever I can,” Jek said, turning to Pip again. “We need to do this fast.”

“Yeah,” Pip agreed. “And after that,” she said, “I’ve got a lot of questions for you two.”


	31. Yeerk

Cypher Two waited. Impatiently. 

His legs bounced nervously despite the effect his drink should be having on him. He had downed two already and was working on his third.

He took a sip, the glittery blue liquid shimmering and swirling as he lifted it to his lips again.

 _Watered down_ , he thought dismally, staring off into the dancing crowd on the pulsing multi-colored dancefloor at no one in particular.

It was the first time in over a decade that he was on a mission. At least, it felt like it.

He scanned the club goers as he sat at the bar: other than the dancers there were the patrons at the various gambling and gaming tables, the kissers, the indifferent. Two scanned them for any sign, any hint of something… _different_ about them. To both his advantage and disadvantage, there were very few fellow Irken guests. After all, it was a Plookesian club. He had expected it, as their people were allied with one another. For now. 

Even with only a handful of other Irken faces, he didn't have to search hard for them in a large crowd. Four of them were sitting crowded around a game of Galactic Invaders, occasionally handing over money chips over bouts of cheerful shrieking that drowned out the exasperated, low groans from who he could only guess were the losers. 

A single other was sitting amongst a group of three Plookesians playing some kind of card game, looking kind of bored, but mostly kind of drunk.

One of them had to be Cypher Six.

Probably.

Unless he was in a private room.

Cypher Two was good at disguises himself, but chose to keep his outward Irken appearance. He was dressed in average civilian attire: a pink tunic and black pants. Nothing special tonight.

But if Cypher Six was in a disguise, Two wouldn't really know. After all, he has never met him. 

After defecting shortly before the collapse of the Cyphers, Two only ever heard stories of Six, keeping tabs on all of his ex-fellow agents through a small resistance network eager to evoke the Irken Empire’s eventual undoing. Most of them were found out or caught red-handed. Those that were died, usually.

But not Kel.

Kel cried over their call that night after days of nothing from him. Two assumed the worst had happened to him, and was relieved to see him alive. Still --

_“Yeerk,” he said, tears in his eyes, a new scar dripping discoloration over his lips. “I can’t do this anymore,” he cried. “Any of it.”_

Kel had lost his hand to an assailant. What was worse, Kel couldn’t recall anything to describe them: other than a pair of green eyes. Violent, and full of evil. 

As much as Cypher Two tried, he couldn’t come up with anymore information than that. His life was lonely without Kel to be with and come home to. And by home, he meant his ship.

Two had spent the last decade and some change travelling all over the galaxy, being cautious enough to stay within the realms of Irken space. He thought that his relationship with Kel might have changed that part. They might have been able to settle down, spend whatever was left of their lives together. 

Two finished off his drink, dousing the thoughts before they could overtake him. He stared gloomily down the ring of his glass. He decided he should just order another one, if Six was going to keep him waiting so long.

“Bartender --”

“-- I’ll have what he’s having,” a voice said from behind him. “In fact, make it two.”

Two turned his head to meet the vaguely handsome face of another Irken. He was tall, thin, clad in a loose-fitting black tunic. He grinned pleasantly down at him as he took a seat directly to his right, effectively blocking the view of the dancefloor and the gaming tables in the distance. 

He absorbed all of Two’s attention in a single motion. Finding himself at a loss for words, all Two could muster was the action of taking a new, full glass in his hands as the stranger did the same.

“How do you take your plooka?” he asked. 

“Live and squirming,” Cypher Two replied, before he even knew it. He blinked, trying to keep his surprise contained. He hadn’t heard Six walk up to him, hadn’t felt an inch of his soul in the crowd, hadn’t even seen him walk through the door. 

Six hummed lowly, eyeing the shimmery blue contents of his glass. “We meet at last.”

“Took you long enough,” Cypher Two remarked, a feigned, flirtatious tone to his voice. “My dates usually don’t keep me waiting.”

“Used to getting drinks bought for you then, hm?” Six countered with a raised brow and a warm smile.

Two giggled, giving Six a playful tap on the shoulder. “Oh, stop,” he giggled. “I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“I might.” Six winked, leaning in to grab the hand not occupied by Two’s glass. “But I’m not so sure that I do.”

They shared a serious, knowing gaze. 

“Why don’t I show you, then?” Two chuckled, taking Six’s hand as he stood. He buried his face in his neck, his lips barely grazing his skin. 

“The gaming rooms are mostly unoccupied,” Two whispered, draping his arms over Six’s shoulders. “I haven’t seen anyone go into one in over half an hour.”

Six faked a look of flattery, taking Two’s hips in his hands. “Sounds good,” he said loudly. He began leading Two away in the direction of the gaming rooms.

They had to go through the dance floor first. Perfect cover, getting lost in the sea of moving bodies, shrouded in flashing blue and pink lights mixed with shadows. 

They found themselves in an empty room on the first attempt at a door knob. The room contained a monitor with all gaming emminties that could be imagined, and a large, comfortable-looking couch that Cypher Two could drown in. 

“What’s all this about?” Two demanded, dropping Cypher Six’s hand as soon as the door closed behind them. “You don’t know me, but you must know that I’ve got nothing to do with the Cyphers anymore.”

“Yet you still agreed to meet.”

“If I had said no, you would have found me anyway,” Two said, frowning.

“True,” Six said, turning to latch the lock beside him. “But, your willingness to remain distant from the Cyphers is why I contacted you in the first place.”

Two’s eyes thinned. He crossed his arms, shifting his weight to one hip. “Is that right?”

“I won’t waste your time,” Six said, resting his back against the door. “I’m looking for someone.”

“And?”

“The person I’m looking for could be, well,” Six paused in thought, “heavily guarded.”

Two scowled, already bored with this conversation. “You want me for man power?”

“Not man power,” he clarified with a shake of his head. “I need you as a distraction.”

“From?”

“Me.” Six took a step forward, pointing a long finger into his chest. “I have reason to believe the person I am looking for may be with Cypher One.”

“So? That has nothing to do with me,” Two said dismissively. “She and I have been done for well over a decade.”

“And if you were to suddenly turn up, how do you think that would affect her?” Six continued. 

“She’d probably _kill_ me is how that would affect her.” Two shook his head aggressively. “No, no. After abandoning our mission in Boodie Nen, I can’t imagine what she feels. But I had to do it.”

Six cocked his head with interest. “You had to leave her on a deserted island occupied by pirates? The kind of pirates that skin people, and put their heads on steaks on the coast to be washed up by the morning tide as an offering to their deity?”

“Are you trying to guilt me or recruit me?” Two demanded. “Choose one and stick to it.”

“I’ll make this short.” 

His PAK retrieved him a datapad. Cypher Six gently took it in his hands, and gave it over to Cypher Two. The screen was already lit with a ghostly white hue that cast its bright shadow over Two’s crimson eyes. It was far too bright.

It was a plain, unofficial, drafted document. The more he read it, the more he hated it.

The document detailed at least the last six months of Cypher Two’s personal logs, all of his outgoing and incoming communications, his travel record, every monie he spent at every place he had been to. It listed all the individuals he regularly spoke to: Kel, Specter, Mia -- everyone in the resistance he contact with, physical or digital, down to an estimated amount of total time he had spent talking to them.

“What is this?” Two snarled, shoving the datapad back into Cypher Six’s hands. “How did you --”

“There is one contact I couldn’t trace,” Six said, holding the datapad back up for Two to see, giving no attention to his questions. “This one, right here.” He pointed to a datalog with an encrypted, hexadecimal log code. “The code is one-time use only, but it was enough for me to trace back to Portia,” he continued, practically shoving the screen into Two’s face. “Have you ever been there?”

Two swiped the datapad away. “Never even heard of such a place.”

“Well, I have,” Six admitted. “Actually, I’ve been there. Not much of a view, just a bunch of rocks and sulfur. It smells awfully foul.”

Six flicked his antennae dismissively. “What is most striking to me is that as someone who claims to have nothing to do with their Cypher brethren anymore, they seem to have made an awful lot of contact with them -- whichever one it may be.”

Two’s face twisted in a deep, contorted scowl. 

The younger Cypher continued. “Because,” he explained, “the only people known to have inhabited that planet in recent years would be Cyphers One and Five. There were many worker drones as well, but no matter how I spin it I can’t imagine they would be clever enough to encrypt a transmission log to the degree that it’s completely useless to me.” He chuckled. “Truly, it’s almost remarkable.”

“I don’t know,” Two spat. He really wasn’t liking this guy’s uppity tone. “I never asked them questions concerning their location or identity.”

“Listen to me,” Cypher Six growled, leaning in close to Two’s gaze. “I know you’re a traitor. I have all the proof I need right here,” he said, shaking the datapad in his hand, “to prove that you should have your conspiring, turncoat _hide_ taken to Judgementia, trialled under an Irken Existence Evaluation, executed in public court, and your memories obliterated.”

Cypher Two stood his ground, his hands balled into angry fists at his sides as Six cupped a hand against Two’s right cheek, running his thumb softly against the beauty mark that rested there. Suddenly, the eerie, ghastly, hate-filled glow of his emerald eyes took him over, predicting Six’s words just as he spoke them.

“I know who you are, _Yeerk_ ,” he said, alarmingly affectionate. “And I know that if you care about Kel and the rest of your resistance friends, you will help me. Because if you don’t, you will be the last one I take care of after destroying each and every one of them that has escaped through the cracks.”

This wasn’t the first time Two had his life threatened. All to often had he stared up at the face of adversity, whether it be from someone like Cypher Six or the Tallest herself. And each time, he had done the same thing.

He _resisted_. 

Two grabbed Six’s wrist as hard as he could, pulling downward and twisting. It would make him happy to snap his bones in half, but all he really needed was a painful distraction to get the hell out of here. 

He wondered why he came in the first place. Maybe he thought things with the Cyphers could be different -- they could have been, at one time. But Two was wrong, left soft and vulnerable with his recent breakup with Kel that this _monster_ caused as they had tried to pick up what little pieces they had to shape the future they desperately hoped for, a future to believe in.

Being born into Empirical servitude hadn’t been kind to him. He and Cypher One only had each other as friends, tied only by the bond of their shared misfortune. They were trained and raised to hunt, kill, and ruin the lives of those that were like him now: freedom fighters, individuals that did not want to see planets destroyed, did not want to see worlds wasted on food courts or parking lots. They were all people who wanted to watch the universe become something greater: a force for change, a place where everyone helped one another, celebrating their differences and enhancing their talents instead of being exploited and enslaved for them.

In his anger, Two screamed, pulling and tugging on Six’s tendons until finally -- they snapped.

It was a sickening, electrical sound. There was a pop, a crack, and a soft, buzzing _zzzt_.

Six’s hand dropped to the ground between them as Two froze in terror. White blood dripped from Six’s wound, pooling viciously on the bright red carpeting at his feet. The fingers of his hand flexed and curled in confusion, waiting for a signal from their master.

“Tallest Almighty, you’re a damned android!” Two gasped. He covered his mouth and repressed the nausea that swept through him like a lit flare on a gas planet constructed entirely of hydrogen. Tears fell from his eyes. His legs were weak standing there, terrified of every unknown possibility of what would happen next.

Six looked more inconvenienced than pained. His eyes were narrowed, his expression thin as he glared down at his hand. And then, he looked back to Cypher Two. “Just wonderful,” he muttered, bending down to pick it up. “You’re a traitor and an idiot.” He growled lowly in frustration as he pressed the sparking, broken wires to the ones on his wrist in vain. “Our trip will be delayed because I will need to have this fixed.”

“You’re gonna need more than just your hand fixed,” Two hissed, taking a few steps back. “Your brain is going to need some rewiring, too, and maybe even a little plastic surgery might do you some good -- also, _fuck_ you for assaulting my boyfriend, you _dick._ “

“What a horrible, nasty mouth you have.” Six tucked his hand in his pocket, and made a move for Cypher Two, who was slow getting out of the way because of the thickening white blood on the carpet in front of him. It was really gross. Six got a hold of Two’s hand and yanked him forward, pulling him toward the door just as he unlocked it. 

“What about this?” Two asked frantically, trying in vain to get free of Six’s grip. He gestured toward the carpet. “Won’t they be suspicious of the _robot blood_ on the floor?”

Six let out something between a cough and a chuckle as he unlocked the door, pushing Two out of it in front of him. “Judging by its appearance and implications alone,” he said, “I don’t think so.”


	32. A Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fabius and Pip forge an agreement, and Jek gets an idea.

“Fabius.”

He jumped inwardly at her voice, turning around to face her. “Oh, my Tallest.” He tucked his datapad into his lab coat pocket. “I didn’t notice you come in.”

Tallest Zeta wore the same discontented grimace on her face as usual. “Service drones just completed remodeling my resting chamber,” she said. She shook her head, her brow in an angry, deep angle. “How could he have done this?” she whispered. “How could he have turned against me?”

Fabius frowned.

The news of Cypher Six's defection didn't come as a surprise. But it was a disaster. Someone's life was lost, and it was someone who never deserved it.

Tallest Zeta crossed her arms and turned away, scowling, with a knowing expression. She was distressed in a way a remorseful person might look. Fabius knew better. She wasn’t distressed because of guilt. She was inconvenienced.

Fabius had not received the details, but he was able to discern most of what happened in her resting chamber. To take apart a living person, placing the pieces onto silverware; that was the work of not just a defective. Cypher Six was transfigured beyond repair.

“Cypher Six was meant to work with a partner,” he reasoned. “Yet, he was working alone. I can’t imagine why he would do such a twisted thing.”

“To get back at me for issuing a bounty on his silly little…” she paused, flicking her wrist as she tried to conjure the right word from thin air, “plaything, no doubt.” 

Fabius didn’t know what all of this was about. Though, he hardly ever cared. Even more rarely, he listened. 

“Stupid girl,” Zeta huffed, throwing her cape over her shoulders as she began to stomp back and forth with frustration. “That bony, pointy-toothed, goody-goody --”

Fabius stifled a retort with light, airy scoff.

The Tallest’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Not a thing my Tallest, it’s just that,” he chuckled, trying to sound friendlier than his words, “you put a bounty on someone for being a paragon of the empire?”

Tallest Zeta noticeably tensed. Her jaw clenched, her icy glare wild and unforgiving. Fabius knew that if he said another word, she would probably kill him on the spot.

He quietly turned his attention back to a simple distillation he had been doing, but he had lost several minutes with Zeta’s interruption. Time was a valuable commodity, and he had to start his most recent test over again.

Recreating Cypher One’s serum was difficult. A purity just even slightly lower than its optimum could produce some unruly side effects.

A reflection in the glass appeared behind him.

“Fabius.” Tallest Zeta’s voice was unnaturally calm. “Don’t forget why you are here.”

She left without another word, leaving him alone.

It’s just what he had been waiting for.

Fabius lifted the datapad from his pocket. He leaned in, bringing it in close. “How rude of me,” he apologized, propping the datapad up toward him. “Did you happen to catch any of that?”

“Every word.” Pip placed a surgical mask onto her face with a disgruntled snort. “It’s incredible how low she is willing to steep for such petty payback.” 

She glanced over her shoulder to someone taller, their ruby gaze full of an emotion Fabius couldn’t quite put his finger on. But there was something familiar about them, so sure he had seen eyes like that before.

Pip shook her head apologetically, but her remorse wasn’t for him. “Pathetic.”

“That isn’t the half of it,” Fabius explained, his voice a hushed, hoarse whisper. “She’s doing far worse here.”

“And where would that be exactly?” Pip asked with a narrowed glare looking past him. “Either your laboratory got a serious upgrade, or you’ve been transferred.”

“Transferred.” He frowned. “It’s miserable. Tallest Zeta has me recreating the serum you’ve concocted, hellbent on getting this queen to grow as quickly as possible.”

Pip flashed a satisfied grin. “Her greed is convenient.”

“Smart of you to mix leuprolide and progesterone.” Fabius smiled. “Suppressing puberty while making the body believe it is already pregnant. Clever.”

“It was a simple consideration.”

“But, you see, apprentice, your serum works too well.”

She gave him a quizzical look.

“Tallest Zeta has resorted to… _feeding_ the queen to encourage her growth.”

Pip shrugged. “What’s wrong with a little space fodder here and there? It will make no difference.”

“It isn’t fodder that she’s feeding it,” Fabius said darkly. “She’s using prisoners.”

She gasped. “People?”

“Innocent people. Screwheads, Vortians, Meekrob, Irkens -- no one is immune.”

It was like she was frozen. She had aged since the last time they spoke. The years of stress, overwork, loneliness, and despair; it was all unmistakable in her expression, even with the mask covering half of her features.

“How many more have to die for this, Fabius?” she murmured, “I hate this.” Pip gestured to Beta laying on the gurney behind her. She waved her hand across the room. “All of it.”

“We can put an end to this,” he promised. “I just need your help.”

“And I need yours, but right now,” Pip said, pointing once again to her unconscious patient. “I need to get this thing out of her.”

Fabius adjusted his datapad to a more comfortable position. “And I’ll help you, if you promise me something in return.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What?”

“My freedom.”

Pip shot him a skeptical look. She crossed her arms and turned away to consult the two others that were with her. Who were all these people? He only sent Beta there and, up until their call, he believed her to be alone.

“What are you waiting for?” one argued, their voice loud and desperate, and on the verge of tears. “Tell him you’ll do it! We have a ship! We can go!”

“The Massive is dangerous,” Pip said. “How would we even know where it is? And if we did, how would we dock without a clearance code?”

The taller stranger offered their word. “I used to pilot that ship, you know. I could mask our signature and give us a believable clearance code.” Their heavy Irken accent gave credence to their words. They shook their head. “Most Navigators aren’t as bright as you’d hope they would be. Even if they found it suspicious, I doubt they would question us.”

“Do ships often visit the Massive?” Pip asked.

“Usually only military ships,” the pilot confessed. “Personal ones were rare. I would have to use a military clearance code.”

“Please,” the other one cried, grabbing onto the sleeve of Pip’s lab coat, “we have to try. All I want is to get Beta back to normal, and we’ll give you the ship. Drop us off somewhere. I don’t care where. I just want her to be okay.”

“You seem quick to forget how you barged in, waving your gun around, bounty hunter,” Pip growled, snagging her wrist free of the other’s grasp. She waved an threatening finger at them. “I will save your friend, but don’t think that I trust you. Especially not after you’ve seen Jek’s face, and know what ship we’ll be taking.” She shook her head. “No. You’ll be coming with us.”

The bounty hunter’s antennae flicked with irritation. “Whatever, I don’t care!” They turned to Fabius. “She said she’ll do what you asked. Get on with it, already!”

“You swear?” Fabius asked.

Pip was frustrated. Angry, even. Maybe. “Yes. I’ll come get you, you insufferable, old man.”

“Promise?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I promise.”

“Good.” He smiled. “So I’ll keep up my end of the deal,” he sighed with relief. “You don’t need to perform a surgery.”

“Wait.” Pip blinked with surprise. “ _What?_ ”

“I just shot her up with a stimulant,” Fabius confessed with a shrug. “Her chest hurt because it made her jittery and anxious. I lied to her about the Xenomorph. She made all of that up herself.”

Pip ripped off her mask and threw it on the ground, and stomped across the floor to her communication screen, fists balled at her sides. “Are you telling me there’s nothing inside her at all?” she growled through gnashed teeth. “Just a bunch of cortisol, amphetamine, or whatever the hell you injected her with?”

“Don’t be too creative,” he chuckled nervously. “It was just caffeine.” 

“Unbelievable.” Pip muttered a string of words to herself. Curses, no doubt. 

The one called Jek took off her mask and approached him, quiet but with obvious, restrained anger. She looked so familiar, he thought. But he still couldn’t place it.

“Fabius, right?” she asked. Her heavy Irken accent gave credence to what she said earlier about her military life. 

Before he could finish nodding, she spoke again. 

“Beta and Isha knew that Pip was your assistant,” she said. “So, does that mean you sent them here?”

Fabius froze for a moment, genuinely impressed with her intuition. “Yes,” he answered slowly, unsure how much the soldier told them when she arrived. “Only Beta, however,” he said. “I’m not sure where Isha came from.”

All pairs of eyes went to Isha. She tensed noticeably, frowning to herself. “Oh, it’s a long story, yanno?” She tried to sound lighthearted.

No one was buying it.

“Look,” she said, “I met Beta by chance. She stopped on the asteroid KV778, in the middle of, well, literally nowhere. I mean, it’s just a fuel station planet. We knew each other from our Empirical service as Elites, but.…” she trailed off, misty-eyed. “I did a few things I’m not proud of, and ended up on that asteroid as a barmaid to pay off a debt that I owe.”

“And you left with her?” Fabius asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “By accident, but once I realized the ship I was trying to steal was her’s and what her situation was, I wanted to stick around.”

“Amazing,” Pip mumbled. “You’re a bounty hunter and a thief.”

“I thought I could save my friend and, well…” Isha sighed, “I thought that if I captured Jek, I could pay off my debt. Then, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything ever again.”

“That’s it!” Jek’s eyes brightened with the light of an idea. “Isha,” she said excitedly, “I want you to capture me.”

“What?” Pip objected, wedging herself into the conversation, and physically in between Jek and Isha. “No, Jek, you can’t do that!”

Jek shrugged. Admittedly, Fabius liked her style. “Why not?” She bent down and placed her hands onto Pip’s shoulders. “Pip, if we do this, we won’t be lying. There will be no reason they wouldn’t let us through.”

“But you said you knew clearance codes,” Pip argued, her face reddened with emotion. “You can get us in. You said they wouldn’t question us.”

“Not for our codes, but we would still have to come up with some kind of purpose as to why we’re there.”

“Then we’ll be, um, mercenaries, or -- or --” Pip stammered, frantically searching her mind for ideas, “I don’t know, plumbers? The plumbing on that ship has to be bad.”

“Oh, it’s bad.” Jek cleared her throat, nodding in agreement. “It is horrible, but service drones onboard take care of that.”

“I think Jek’s plan is brilliant,” Isha interjected. “It’s sure to get us on there.”

“The trick is getting off,” Pip responded immediately, before her expression flared with distrust as she remembered an important detail. “How do I know you won’t just take the money and run?” she snapped. Jek lifted her hands off of her in surprise. “You’re forgetting that I can’t believe anything you say.”

“Well, you’re going to _have_ to!” Isha stomped her foot with frustration. “No matter which plan we choose you’re going to need to trust me, whether you like it or not!”

“ _Tallest Almighty,_ ” a voice behind them groaned with annoyance. “Can you all shut up?”

They all turned to Beta, who was sitting up in her bed, still attached to wires and tubes alike. Her chest was still exposed by her gown, but she didn’t seem to mind it. 

“Beta!” 

Isha rushed over to her friend, giving her a gentle push back down. Beta succumbed, rubbing her head drowsily. “Is it gone?” she muttered, her words slurring slightly. “I wanna see it.”

“You’re fine,” Pip said, quickly joining them at the gurney. She covered Beta back up and spoke to her gently, too quiet for Fabius to hear. She began unhooking her to any unnecessary drips and machines, leaving him and Jek alone.

“It’s a good idea,” he admitted, “but I would hate for something to go wrong.”

“Would you?” Jek replied, a dubious tone in her voice. “You set this whole thing up, knowing Pip would react emotionally.”

Fabius groaned to himself, wondering if he agreed with her or not. “It’s complicated,” he said, settling with a vague answer. “You couldn’t understand.”

“Maybe not.” Jek’s gaze averted elsewhere, thwarted by his response. She remained silent as Pip and Isha ushered Beta out of the room, rolling her elsewhere.

“You know,” he said quietly after a moment’s pause, “my apprentice seems to care for your well-being.”

Jek seemed to recoil at his suggestion, a hesitant emotion looming over her. “That’s a long story,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re right, though.”

“If she didn’t care about you to a significant degree,” he reasoned, “she wouldn’t be so opposed to your suggestion.” Fabius yawned tiredly, as much as he had tried to stifle it. “She is the only one against it, after all.”

The pilot looked on flatly. Blankly. “Her decisions have nothing to do with me.”

She was done making small talk. Her arms were folded over her chest, her fingers squeezed around her biceps. She turned around with not a single look back, and began to tear away uncomfortably at her medical gear. 

Fabius rested his chin on the tops of his hands. Even her voice sounded familiar.

But how? From where?

Pip came back alone. There was a shared glance between her and Jek, as subtle as it might have been. Fabius felt himself slightly invested in the mystery of their relationship. Just a little. Pip was his apprentice. He raised her, taught her all of his secrets, and as much knowledge as he could until --

“You didn’t tell me you gave her my ship!”

Pip stomped back into the room, her antennae lying flat against her back. She was holding two cups of coffee in her grasp, and was miraculously able to not spill them. She handed one off to Jek.

“My _customized_ Ring Ripper!”

Fabius shot her a wry smile. “All it was doing as sitting there in storage. Hasn’t been flown since.”

“That ship might as well have a target painted on it,” Pip scoffed, pausing only to take a sip of her coffee. He wasn’t sure how she was drinking it, though. Even through a screen it looked scalding. Steam was practically billowing from the cup. “You know the other Cyphers could see it, pick up it’s signal -- anything --”

“Why would any other Cyphers want to be anywhere in your cold, dying sector of space?”

It was a rhetorical question, but both women looked worried about that possibility.

“They don’t like me very much, you know,” Pip said.

Fabius sat up a little straighter, suddenly remembering something that was probably important. “Wait. Isn’t Cypher Five supposed to be there with you?”

“Allegedly.” She pursed her lips. “I haven’t seen any trace of her. There is no signal for her ship, no sign she was ever here. Nothing.”

“Strange.”

Fabius sensed her confusion and apprehension. He knew now that more had happened to her than she let on, even through the encrypted messages and forged lab reports they shared. Was she worried someone else might read them, or was she not willing to share details of her life with him anymore?

It could easily be either. Or both. 

Their years on Vort together had left her sheltered and vulnerable, because she knew nothing else than missions and the insides and outs of a laboratory. Despite her sworn secrecy, they had always shared everything. Between them, there were no secrets. But then, Persephone happened. Cypher Six happened.

Then… they suddenly weren’t so close anymore. 

“I’ll send you a message once we decide how we’re coming to get you,” Pip said finally, her voice hollow around the rim of her cup. “Use our usual symmetric key.”

“Okay,” Fabius said, anxiously looking over his shoulder. “Got it.”

“Well, until then.”

Pip disconnected the call. 

Fabius slumped in his chair, letting his head fall into his hands. He rubbed his temples as his heart raced. His world seemed to slow down around him. The fast pace of their conversation was gone, and he was left with the soft sounds of beeping and dripping water as his only company.


End file.
